SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


SOCIALIZING  THE 
THREE  R'S 


BY 

RUTH  MARY  WEEKS 

AUTHOR  OF 

THE  PEOPLE'S  SCHOOL:  A  STUDY  IN 
VOCATIONAL  TRAINING 


Nefo  ffotfc 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1919 

All  rights  retorted 


COPYRIGHT,  1919, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  July,  igig. 


Norfoooti 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  MUM.,  U.S.A. 


IL 


*7"T  OF  °  «  T  TFOKNIA 
SANTA  BAIiBAKA 


TO  THE 
HEROIC  PEOPLE  OF  BELGIUM 

WHO  DIED 
THAT  DEMOCRACY  MIGHT  LIVE 

THIS  LITTLE  BOOK 

ON  DEMOCRATIC  EDUCATION 

IS  GRATEFULLY 

DEDICATED 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE  GROWING  POINT  IN  MODERN  EDUCATION     .        1 
H.    THE  WORLD  TO-DAY 10 

1.  Culture  In  America 10 

2.  Politics   .         ....         .         .         .19 

3.  Industry          .         ...         .         .         .22 

4.  Nationalism  and  International  Policy     .         .       30 

5.  Preparation  for  Social  Citizenship  ...       44 

III.  READING  AND  WRITING 52 

IV.  SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC 86 

V.    HISTORY         .        .'•.'• 103 

VI.  ART  FOR  LITTLE  FOLKS 114 

VII.  GENERAL  SCIENCE 123 

VEIL  MANUAL  TRAINING        .        .        .        .        .        .128 

IX.  SOCIAL  PLAY  ......        .        .        .134 

X.      SCHOOLHOUSES   AND    CLASSROOMS   ....      149 

XI.    CONCLUSION 163 

APPENDICES .        .167 


vii 


SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 


THE  GROWING  POINT  IN  MODERN 
EDUCATION 

THE  last  twenty-five  years  have  seen  a  greater 
improvement  in  the  caliber  and  training  of  American 
teachers  than  in  the  personnel  of  any  other  learned 
profession  ;  and  the  fact  that  this  has  come  in  spite  of 
extraordinary  expansion  of  public  school  facilities  and 
consequent  rapid  growth  in  the  demand  for  teachers 
is  a  striking  proof  of  the  energy  and  esprit  de  corps 
of  the  pedagogic  body,  and  of  the  increasing  at- 
traction of  this  calling  for  public-spirited  men  and 
women.  Never  before  have  professional  standards 
been  so  high ;  the  humblest  college  instructor  must 
show  his  Ph.D.  in  the  catalogue;  high  school  po- 
sitions can  scarcely  be  had  without  a  degree  from 
some  first-class  university,  and  a  multiplicity  of  corre- 
spondence and  summer  courses,  together  with  more 
freely  granted  leaves  of  absence,  encourage  instruc- 
tors to  even  further  work  along  their  chosen  lines ; 
vocational  branches  are  taught  more  and  more  by 
trained  experts ;  except  in  the  most  backward  rural 
districts,  a  normal  diploma  in  addition  to  high  school 

B  1 


2  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

credit  is  required  of  all  grade  school  teachers ;  stu- 
dents in  kindergarten  training  schools  are  drawn 
from  the  best  high  school  and  even  college  material ; 
and  constant  checking  up  of  methods  and  results  by 
trained  supervisors  and  efficiency  experts  keeps  the 
city  teacher,  at  least,  on  his  mettle  and  energetically 
employing  the  whole  of  his  new  professional  re- 
sources. 

Educational  ideas  too  have  undergone  in  the  last 
twenty-five  years  an  equally  impressive  revolution. 
First  came  the  kindergarten  with  its  study  of  child 
nature  and  its  profound  influence  on  teaching 
methods  from  grade  school  to  university:  next 
manual  training  with  its  emphasis  on  the  all-round 
development  of  personality;  then  so-called  practi- 
cal courses  like  bookkeeping,  millinery,  and  cooking, 
with  their  recognition  of  the  duty  of  education  to 
prepare  for  self-supporting  life;  then  out  and  out 
vocational  education  and  vocational  guidance ;  and 
now  the  Gary,  Montessori,  and  Dewey  systems  of 
administration,  making  of  the  school  itself  a  world 
in  miniature.  Never  have  subjects  been  so  well 
and  attractively  taught  in  their  respective  class- 
rooms ;  never  has  the  trend  of  educational  thought 
been  so  progressive,  so  practical,  so  close  to  daily 
needs. 

And  it  is  fortunate  that  this  is  so,  for  never  before 
has  the  task  confronting  the  public  school  system 
of  a  nation  been  so  complex,  so  vital,  so  stupendous 
as  it  is  in  America  to-day.  Never  has  any  teaching 
body  stood  so  much  in  need  of  skill  and  vision,  of 


GROWING  POINT  IN  MODERN  EDUCATION    3 

technique  and  imagination,  of  factual  knowledge, 
and  of  social  ideals.  Not  only  is  the  mechanism  of 
modern  life  far  more  complicated  than  that  for  which 
our  educational  schedule  was  originally  drafted,  but 
culturally,  religiously,  politically,  and  industrially, 
America  like  all  the  world  is  facing  a  readjustment 
of  forces  and  ideals ;  and  to  America  the  nations 
look  for  the  democratic  program  on  which  the  coming 
years  can  rear  the  structure  of  a  liberal  and  harmo- 
nious international  life.  To  contribute  to  this  pro- 
gram, to  tune  the  mind  and  heart  of  future  gener- 
ations to  this  readjustment  —  such  is  the  problem 
of  our  public  schools.  And  it  is  to  an  analysis  of 
this  great  task  in  relation  to  the  specific  subjects  of 
grade  school  study  that  the  chapters  in  this  book 
will  be  devoted,  in  the  hope  of  formulating  a  point 
of  view  toward  the  whole  matter  of  schooling  that 
may  revitalize  and  suggest  new  manipulations  of 
that  material  which  has  never  been  so  well  known 
and  taught  by  American  teachers  as  it  is  known  and 
taught  to-day,  yet  which  must  be  readapted  to  meet 
the  unsolved  problems  not  only  in  our  national  life 
but  in  the  wider  international  world  in  which  we 
soon  must  play  a  leading  r6le. 

There  is  no  topic  about  which  pedagogues  hear 
more  —  and  in  spite  of  our  progressiveness,  think 
less  —  than  this  same  function  of  the  school  system 
as  a  whole.  We  are  told  that  we  are  training  the 
men  and  women  of  to-morrow,  that  in  our  hands 
lies  the  destiny  of  a  nation ;  and  we  hear  numerous 
exhortations  to  equip  for  life  the  rising  generation. 


4  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

But  practical  definition  of  this  life  for  which  we  are 
to  prepare  the  new  generation  does  not  fall  so  often 
from  the  lips  of  our  advisors  or  shape  itself  so  clearly 
to  our  view. 

If  not  sure  enough,  still  we  are  comfortably  sure 
of  our  arithmetic,  geography,  history,  and  the  rest ; 
our  normal  schools  have  taught  us  that,  together 
with  ingenious  devices  for  insinuating  such  matters 
into  the  unwary  brain  of  youth.  We  are  sure,  if 
not  sure  enough,  of  child  psychology,  for  we  have 
studied  the  child's  interests  and  mental  processes, 
and  learned  how  to  make  of  school  a  vital  and  fas- 
cinating factor  in  his  experience.  But  how  clearly 
do  we  teachers  understand  the  social,  political,  and 
industrial  organization  of  the  world  for  whose  per- 
fecting we  are  preparing  the  pupils  in  our  common 
schools  ?  And  what  scientific  analysis  have  we  so 
far  made  of  the  duties,  responsibilities,  and  op- 
portunities of  the  adult  American  life  of  which 
the  child  must  one  day  form  a  part  ?  Certain 
fundamental  functions  of  the  individual  suggest 
themselves  readily  enough  for  consideration  —  self- 
support,  self-cultivation,  marriage,  parenthood,  citi- 
zenship, and  the  employment  of  leisure — but  what  in 
America  to-day  does  each  of  these  terms  mean  ?  and 
how  can  actual  classroom  instruction,  while  keeping 
hold  of  childish  interests,  connect  with  and  prepare 
for  these  duties,  responsibilities,  and  opportunities  ? 
That  is  a  question  to  which  we  are  not  so  ready  to 
reply.  Yet  we  are  on  the  brink  of  a  vast  educa- 
tional readaptation  to  life,  a  vast  socialization  of  in- 


GROWING  POINT  IN  MODERN  EDUCATION    5 

struction  to  meet  the  new  complexities  of  our  national 
and  international  affairs,  and  the  successful  teacher 
of  to-morrow  will  be  the  teacher  who  can  answer  that 
question  and  apply  the  answer  to  his  curriculum. 
For  the  teaching  of  to-morrow  will  be  done  not,  as 
too  often  heretofore,  in  the  artificial  vacuum  of 
schoolroom  atmosphere,  but  in  the  open  air  of  life; 
normal  training  schools  will  begin  their  study  not 
with  the  special  subjects  which  their  graduates  must 
some  day  teach,  not  with  methods,  not  even  with 
child  nature,  but  with  a  solid  foundation  of  biology, 
history,  economics,  and  sociology  —  sciences  which 
explain  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  world  we  know, 
in  what  respects  it  is  satisfactory,  and  in  accordance 
with  what  laws  of  growth  we  must  work  in  order  to 
shape  and  accelerate  its  progress ;  every  teacher  will 
work  from  a  clearly  formulated  social  and  economic 
philosophy ;  and  the  pivotal  and  central  fact  in  public 
schooling  will  be  at  last  a  social  ideal. 

Since  the  publication  nearly  twenty  years  ago  of 
John  Dewey's  epoch-making  little  volume,  School  and 
Society,  pedagogues  have  recognized  that  formal  edu- 
cation to  be  effective  must  adjust  itself  to  the  outside 
world.  Vocational  education  and  vocational  guid- 
ance are  a  long  stride  toward  linking  school  and  life 
and  making  education  at  once  prepare  for  and  affect 
the  world  of  practical  affairs.  But  too  often  this 
adjustment  has  been  only  piecemeal,  a  link  here  and 
there  between  certain  details  of  school  and  life  or 
between  certain  departments  of  instruction  or  even 
whole  schools  and  some  single  aspect  of  social  activ- 


6  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

ity.  Herein  lies  the  weakness  of  exclusively  voca- 
tional schools  directed  solely  to  the  creation  of  wage- 
earning  power  in  special  professional,  commercial,  or 
industrial  lines.  And  herein  lies  the  weakness  of 
much  intelligent  endeavor  to  illustrate  instruction 
from  the  outside  world  and  to  take  up  in  class  dis- 
cussion definite  topics  of  public  interest.  All  these 
gropings  toward  unification  of  school  and  life  fall 
short  of  that  socialization  which  goes  to  the  root  of 
aim  and  method ;  infuses  into  ground  plan  and  trivial 
detail  of  education  the  spirit  of  constructive  sociol- 
ogy ;  and  sets  in  the  heart  of  every  teacher  the  ques- 
tion not  simply  "How  can  I  best  teach  this  child  to 
read,  write,  and  calculate  ?"  but  "How  can  I  best  fit 
him  to  survive  in  the  world  we  know  and  also  to 
help  bring  to  pass  the  better  world  of  which  we 
dream?"  Here  is  the  growing  point  of  education; 
here  the  direction  of  its  future  progress ;  here  the 
line  beyond  which  we  most  need  to  widen  our  horizon 
and  reach  out  for  new  methods  and  ideals.  For  too 
often  in  the  past,  school  training  has  been  not  only 
formal  and  academic,  but  largely  selfish  as  well, 
setting  a  premium  on  individual  acquisitiveness 
rather  than  group  cooperation.  Social  interests, 
social  habits,  social  ideals  are  not  the  stuff  of  which 
the  average  recitation  is  composed ;  and  still  less  is 
the  average  classroom  recitation  planned  to  be  a 
part  in  any  comprehensive  scheme  of  social  better- 
ment. 

But  with  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the 
War  has  come  a  great  resurgence  of  the  civic  sense  of 


GROWING  POINT  IN  MODERN  EDUCATION    7 

educational  agencies.  This  consciousness  has  so  far 
been  in  the  main  directed  toward  the  obviously 
patriotic  and  military  types  of  national  service : 
enlistment  in  the  army,  military  training,  purchase 
of  Liberty  Bonds,  and  Red  Cross  and  relief  work  of 
various  kinds.  But  such  wholesome  civic  spirit  will 
find  a  broader  and  more  permanent  expression. 
"The  War,"  writes  our  great  American  school  mas- 
ter, President  Wilson,  in  his  appeal  to  American 
school  officers,  "The  War  is  bringing  to  the  minds  of 
our  people  a  new  appreciation  of  the  problems  of 
national  life  and  a  deeper  understanding  of  the  mean- 
ing and  aims  of  democracy.  Matters  which  here- 
tofore have  seemed  commonplace  and  trivial  are 
seen  in  a  truer  light.  The  urgent  demand  for  the 
production  and  proper  distribution  of  food  and  other 
national  resources  has  made  us  aware  of  the  close 
dependence  of  individual  on  individual  and  nation 
on  nation.  The  efforts  to  keep  up  social  and  indus- 
trial organizations  in  spite  of  the  withdrawal  of 
men  for  the  army  have  revealed  the  extent  to  which 
modern  life  has  become  complex  and  specialized. 

"These  and  other  lessons  of  the  War  must  be 
learned  quickly  if  we  are  intelligently  and  success- 
fully to  defend  our  institutions.  When  the  War  is 
over,  we  must  apply  the  wisdom  which  we  have 
acquired,  in  purging  and  ennobling  the  life  of  the 
world. 

"In  these  vital  tasks  of  acquiring  a  broader  view 
of  human  possibilities,  the  common  school  must 
have  a  large  part.  I  urge  that  teachers  and  other 


8  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

school  officers  increase  materially  the  time  and  atten- 
tion devoted  to  instruction  bearing  directly  on  the 
problems  of  community  and  national  life. 

"Such  a  plea  is  in  no  way  foreign  to  the  spirit  of 
American  education  or  of  existing  practices.  Nor  is 
it  a  plea  for  a  temporary  enlargement  of  the  school 
program  appropriate  merely  to  the  period  of  the  War. 
It  is  a  plea  for  a  realization  in  public  education  of 
the  new  emphasis  which  the  War  has  given  to  the 
ideals  of  democracy  and  to  the  broader  conceptions 
of  national  life." 

Let  us  then  ask  what  specifically  these  ideals  are ; 
how  they  are  manifested  in  the  cultural,  political, 
and  industrial  life  of  our  United  States ;  what  are 
the  obstacles  to  their  full  realization;  and  how 
school  systems  can  contribute  to  their  fruition  in 
national  efficiency  and  the  international  organiza- 
tion of  a  democratic  world.  The  head  of  a  great 
social  settlement  once  said  of  the  even  greater 
grammar  school  across  the  street,  "We  cannot  coop- 
erate with  the  school ;  it  has  no  social  ideal."  Yet  if 
the  teacher  knows  and  understands  the  world  and 
its  problems,  formulates  a  plan  for  human  progress 
in  harmony  with  the  trend  of  evolution,  works  out 
the  relation  of  his  special  subject  to  this  plan,  and 
so  presents  it  as  to  prepare  the  pupil  for  his  special 
destiny,  teaching  is  the  most  fundamental,  far- 
reaching,  permanent,  and  constructive  social  service. 
The  splendid  response  of  our  country  to  the  call  of 
humanity  in  this  present  war,  the  strides  which  the 
United  States,  all  unprepared,  has  made  in  two  short 


GROWING  POINT  IN  MODERN  EDUCATION    9 

years,  the  stupendous  character  of  her  military  un- 
dertakings, attest  the  fact  that  in  the  past  her 
public  schools  have  done  their  duty  well.  But  a 
new  future  lies  before  us,  bringing  to  our  educational 
system  new  problems  and  responsibilities.  To  solve 
these  problems  and  shoulder  these  responsibilities, 
what  then  do  we  teachers  need  to  know  about  the 
world  to-day  ?  What  relation  do  the  subjects  of 
grade  school  study  bear  to  social  progress  ?  And 
how  shall  we  teach  them  to  extract  their  greatest 
social  value  ? 


II 

THE   WORLD    TO-DAY 

IN  the  space  of  this  short  study,  a  complete  and 
scientific  sociological  basis  for  modern  education  can 
scarcely  be  erected.  We  can  take  at  best  but  a 
sweeping  glance  at  the  outstanding  features  of  the 
American  world  by  and  for  which  we  must  shape 
our  program.  Yet  some  such  preliminary  survey, 
inadequate  though  it  be,  is  necessary  to  give  us 
landmarks  for  our  discussion  and  to  point  out  the 
paths  along  which  childhood  can  be  led  through 
reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  history,  games,  art, 
science,  and  manual  training  into  a  clearer  under- 
standing of  the  world  which  soon  will  be  for  better  or 
for  worse,  the  stuff  and  partner  of  its  destiny. 

1 
CULTURE  IN  AMERICA 

Far  more  striking  for  some  years  past  than  even 
our  strident  and  overadvertised  materialism,  has 
been  the  rapidly  widening  circle  of  culture  and 
education  in  the  United  States. 

Vast  numbers  of  people,  for  instance,  are  to-day 
forming  the  habit  of  reading  who  till  recently  either 
did  not  read  at  all  or  else  read  slowly  and  painfully, 

10 


THE  WORLD   TO-DAY  11 

spelling  out  syllable  by  syllable  the  evening  paper  or 
an  infrequent  letter.  The  trashy  novels,  cheap  maga- 
zines, and  yellow  journals  which  convince  some 
critics  that  literature  is  going  to  the  dogs,  are  really 
a  hopeful  sign.  They  do  not  complicate  the  task  of 
reading  by  any  difficulty  in  understanding  their  sub- 
stance, and  thus  they  train  persons  to  like  to  read  for 
whom  the  sheer  physical  difficulty  of  rapid  reading 
had  been  an  insuperable  barrier  to  enjoyment. 
From  the  cheap  novel  and  flashy  journal,  such 
persons  graduate,  not  into  Thackeray  and  Jane 
Austen,  to  be  sure,  but  into  substantial  periodi- 
cals like  The  World's  Work  and  the  good  news- 
papers, and  a  new  reading  public  accessible  to 
ideas  and  information  is  created.  In  the  school, 
too,  the  application  to  the  teaching  of  reading  of 
new  methods  based  on  such  scientific  study  of  the 
reading  process  as  that  conducted  at  the  Chicago 
School  of  Education,1  tends  toward  the  same  end. 
Pupils  who  formerly  left  school  able  to  read  but  still 
for  all  practical  purposes  nonreaders,  under  the 
new  regime  overcome  their  difficulties  and  learn  the 
joy  that  comes  with  rapidity  and  power. 

People  who  never  went  to  the  theater  before  are 
flocking  to  moving  picture  shows,  and  the  movies 
do  not  mean  deterioration  of  theatrical  taste  but  the 
awakening  of  dramatic  interest  in  a  vast  new  au- 

1  See  University  of  Chicago  Press  publications :  Studies  of  Elementary 
School  Reading  by  W.  S.  Gray,  An  Experimental  Study  in  the  Psychology 
of  Reading  by  W.  A.  Schmidt,  Types  of  Reading  Ability  by  C.  T.  Gray, 
and  Reading:  Its  Nature  and  Development  by  C.  H.  Judd. 


12  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

dience  which  the  American  theater  of  the  future  will 
have  to  draw  upon.  People  once  ignorant  of  music 
are  playing  the  pianola  and  victrola ;  and  while  it  is 
all  too  true  that  these  devices  produce  lazy  man's 
music  and  are  only  one  more  symptom  of  a  growing 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  public  to  seek  entertain- 
ment from  without  instead  of  engaging  in  creative 
play,  still  free  concerts  and  "canned  music"  are 
gradually  leading  the  average  family  away  from 
"There'll  be  a  hot  time  in  the  old  town  to-night" 
to  something  really  sweet  and  fine  in  musical  enjoy- 
ment. Cheap  productions  of  great  paintings  and 
sculpture,  the  rising  standard  of  book  and  news- 
paper illustrations,  the  opening  of  galleries  in  the 
smaller  cities  throughout  the  United  States,  all  these 
agencies  gradually  interest  new  people  in  the  world 
of  art.  Every  cottage  has  its  chromo  on  the  wall, 
perhaps  hideous  in  itself  but  herald  of  better  things, 
sign  of  a  dawning  instinct  for  the  decorative  and 
expressive  side  of  life. 

The  force  of  this  widening  circle  of  culture  is  felt 
in  the  realm  of  education.  High  school  teachers  and 
even  college  professors  often  complain  that  the  qual- 
ity of  their  pupils  is  deteriorating,  but  the  real  fact 
is  that  a  sort  of  people  are  going  through  ward 
school,  through  high  school,  even  on  to  college,  who 
never  before  have  gone  to  school.  There  are  just  as 
many  cultivated  pupils  with  a  home  background  of 
refined  tastes,  but  they  seem  few  beside  the  hordes 
who  are  suddenly  beginning  to  feel  the  need  of  educa- 
tion and  culture  without  having  any  real  taste  or 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  13 

liking  for  it  at  the  start.  This  situation  contains  an 
obvious  and  wonderful  opportunity  and  a  less  obvious 
but  overwhelming  problem.  The  teacher  is  con- 
fronted by  the  well-nigh  unanswerable  question  of  to 
whom  her  teaching  shall  be  directed  ?  Shall  it  be 
directed  to  the  pupils  with  better  advantages  and 
more  cultivated  perceptions,  or  shall  standards  be 
lowered  to  the  level  of  the  inrushing  Goths  and 
Vandals  ?  Of  course  practically  the  teacher  has  to 
compromise  with  the  comparatively  low  cultural 
standards  of  this  vast  new  public  which  is  coming  up 
to  the  halls  of  learning  for  the  first  time.  She  is 
swamped.  The  Goths  triumph  by  sheer  numbers. 
She  may  even  be  a  Goth  herself,  for  they  have  car- 
ried the  stronghold  of  diplomas  and  invaded  every 
profession. 

To  illustrate  what  such  a  triumph  of  the  lower 
average  means,  let  me  describe  a  trivial  experiment 
I  have  made  with  high  school  and  college  students 
for  the  last  five  or  six  years.  It  is  my  practice  to  ask 
each  of  my  classes  what  is  their  idea  of  a  real  gentle- 
man. I  find  that  almost  without  exception  they 
entertain  a  strong  prejudice  against  finish  in  speech 
and  manner,  their  preference  being  for  the  rough 
diamond  who  may  not  know  how  to  choose  his  forks 
at  a  dinner  but  who  has  a  true  heart.  This  is,  I  fear, 
neither  a  reaction  against  artificiality  nor  even  the 
by-product  of  current  shirt-sleeve  fiction,  but  the 
dislike  usually  felt  by  inferiority  for  what  reminds  it 
of  its  limitations.  In  the  face  of  this  overwhelming 
prejudice,  any  pupil  who  has  naturally  finished  man- 


14  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

ners  and  educated  tastes  will  hide  them.  .  Children 
dread  the  judgment  of  their  contemporaries.  Your 
own  little  boy,  if  set  down  among  the  street  arabs  of 
New  York,  would  painfully  acquire  their  jargon  so 
as  not  to  be  peculiar.  Popular  education  does  just 
this  in  a  modified  form  to  that  minority  of  our  pupils 
who  come  from  cultivated  families.  If  the  teacher 
follows  the  general  lead  in  her  instruction,  by  com- 
promising with  the  majority,  she  deprives  the  average 
pupils  of  the  stimulus  of  a  higher  standard,  and  the 
more  fortunate  pupils  of  the  chance  to  start  from 
where  they  already  are  and  forge  ahead. 

But  we  are  confronted  in  our  classrooms  not  only 
with  different  cultural  levels  but  with  widely  varying 
individual  ability.  Shall  we  set  our  teaching-pace 
by  the  brighter  or  the  slower  pupils  and  to  which 
shall  we  devote  that  scanty  individual  attention 
which  a  crowded  class  permits  ?  Although  it  is 
obvious  that  the  bright  child  has  the  greater  social 
value,  it  is  usually  said  that  the  clever  ones  can  get 
along  alone;  that  the  instructor  should  put  his 
extra  time  where  it  is  needed  most;  and  that  the 
ability  of  the  average  must  set  the  pace.  This  is 
like  giving  the  right  of  way  to  the  freight  train  and 
not  the  flyer ;  and  indeed  ordinary  public  education 
does  force  the  flyers  to  crawl  along  behind  the  slow 
coaches  or  derail  and  try  to  bump  past  unguided  in 
the  ditch.  As  some  educator  has  remarked,  most  of 
us  come  nearer  doing  all  that  can  be  done  for  our 
average  than  for  our  better  pupils.  Our  really 
gifted  students  remain  largely  untaught;  and  our 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  15 

only  provision  for  their  superaverage  capacity  is 
the  illogical  makeshift  of  skipping  grades. 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  the  present  school 
system  aggravates  this  cultural  and  intellectual 
tyranny  of  the  average.  Educational  pioneers  have 
at  last  discovered  that  grammar  school,  high  school, 
and  even  university  classes  should  be  sifted  and 
graded  so  that  students  of  similar  power  and  prepa- 
ration can  progress  together  at  a  reasonably  uniform 
rate;  yet  in  most  cities,  large  scale  education  still 
means  the  old  overflowing  ungraded  classes  with 
fixed  courses  adapted  to  the  greatest  number.  Man- 
ual training  and  art  teachers  have  fared  better  than 
the  rest  in  this  regard  since  individual  instruction  is 
so  obviously  necessary  in  these  branches,  but  there 
is  a  growing  tendency  to  crowd  easels  and  benches 
even  here  to  the  full  room  capacity  as  the  demand 
for  education  increases  faster  than  the  buildings. 

The  mediocrity  of  too  many  teachers  also  helps  to 
level  down  instruction.  Edward  A.  Ross  in  dis- 
cussing education  as  one  of  the  powerful  factors  in 
social  control,  speaks  of  the  great  gain  in  the  partial 
substitution  of  the  teacher  for  the  parent  as  the 
model  upon  which  the  child  forms  itself.  "Copy 
the  child  will,  and  the  advantage  of  giving  him  his 
teacher  instead  of  his  father  to  imitate  is  that  the 
teacher  is  a  picked  person  and  the  father  is  not." 
Consider  then  the  loss  if  the  teacher  be  not  a  picked 
person,  picked  not  merely  in  the  sense  of  knowing 
something  the  child  does  not  know  and  having  the 
gift  of  imparting  that  knowledge;  but  picked  in 


16  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

being  one  whose  view  of  life,  whose  tastes,  whose 
instinctive  preferences,  whose  superficial  manners 
and  whose  ideals  are  superior  to  those  of  the  homes 
from  which  the  children  come. 

Yet  the  matter  of  mere  knowledge  is  not  one  to 
overlook  in  a  quest  for  personal  requirements  since 
information  underlies  any  substantial  culture  or 
successful  teaching.  A  recent  survey  of  the  prepara- 
tion of  grade  and  high  school  instructors  in  a  west- 
ern state  revealed  the  startling  fact  that  in  spite  of 
the  required  college  or  normal  school  diploma, 
teachers  in  that  commonwealth  were  still  inade- 
quately equipped  since  in  surprisingly  few  cases 
were  they  engaged  in  the  work  on  which  they  had 
specialized  in  college.  What  they  knew  about  their 
present  subjects  was  largely  at  the  expense  of  the 
pupils  who  had  passed  through  their  hands.  The 
grade  school,  the  high  school,  and  sometimes  even 
the  freshman  year  of  college  become  in  such  a  case  a 
sort  of  unsupervised  training  school  for  teaching 
specialists  and  the  students  serve  as  unwitting 
practice  classes. 

The  result  is  vicious  for  both  master  and  pupil, 
for  when  the  young  and  poorly  prepared  instructor, 
only  a  little  way  ahead  of  his  students,  attempts 
to  present,  for  instance,  great  poetry  which  is 
beyond  their  full  and  ready  grasp,  it  is  all  too 
easy  to  vulgarize  the  subject  instead  of  getting 
the  pupil  imaginatively  aroused  and  dragging  him 
to  the  level  of  the  theme  in  hand.  Students  in 
advanced  university  courses  often  manifest  a  stolid 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  17 

self-satisfaction,  lack  of  imagination,  and  incapacity 
to  appreciate  the  beyond-themselves-ness  of  what 
they  study,  an  incapacity  to  rise  to  it,  expand  with 
it  and  enter  into  it  with  dignity,  which  comes  partly 
from  lack  of  home  advantages,  but  also  in  part  from 
prolonged  contact  with  immature  instructors  who 
have  not  made  themselves  at  home  with  culture, 
and  who  in  the  press  of  teaching,  never  grow  beyond 
the  elementary  aspects  of  things  which  the  intel- 
ligent student  could  discover  for  himself.  Thus  the 
pupil  comes  to  think  there  is  nothing  in  a  subject 
except  what  he  can  see  without  much  effort. 

The  teacher  who  gives  real  impetus  to  learning  and 
thinking,  is  a  scholar  and  a  pedagogue  as  well.  It  is 
the  weighty  factual  equipment  which  gives  general- 
ization and  appreciation  their  force  and  truth  and 
liveliness.  Every  mind  cannot  carry  the  weight 
of  exhaustive  knowledge  and  still  keep  the  general 
view;  but  that  proves  not  that  scientific  scholar- 
ship is  undesirable  in  a  teacher,  but  that  such  per- 
sons do  not  belong  in  the  profession.  The  real 
teacher  is  one  who,  having  mastered  the  factual  details 
without  which  enthusiasm  is  mere  air  treading,  can 
hold  them  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand  and  use  them  as 
the  stuff  for  a  large  imaginative  presentation.  For 
example,  the  only  person  who  can  make  past  litera- 
ture vital  to  our  day  is  the  person  who  knows  how  it 
was  vital  in  its  own,  for  he  alone  knows  what  it  is. 
The  history  —  economic,  social,  political,  religious, 
and  artistic  —  out  of  which  it  grew,  the  foreign  in- 
fluences that  played  upon  and  paralleled  it,  all  this 


18  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

is  necessary  to  understanding  present  growth  and 
change,  to  getting  below  present  surface  phenomena 
to  where  the  cumulative  forces  of  past  and  present 
are  at  work.  If  we  believe  in  evolution,  we  must 
wish  to  be  ourselves  "on  the  Lord's  side,"  to  act 
consciously  with  the  forward-going  forces.  And  how 
act  with  them  till  by  a  study  of  the  course  of  human 
progress,  we  distinguish  what  they  are  ?  Deep,  ripe, 
and  exhaustive  scholarship,  then,  is  essential  to  the 
teaching  of  any  branch  of  any  subject  from  primer 
grade  to  university.  It  must  at  this  point  be  ad- 
mitted, however,  that  our  colleges  and  universities 
have  not  yet  successfully  combined  training  in 
scholarship  with  training  in  grade  or  high  school 
teaching  methods.  But  that  scholarship  is  soon  to 
be  demanded  of  all  who  seek  teaching  positions  is 
obvious  to  those  who  watch  the  choice  of  teachers 
in  all  departments  of  up-to  date  school  systems. 
And  the  absence  of  such  scholarship  on  the  part  of 
many  gifted  and  intelligent  instructors  has  been  the 
ball  and  chain  which  still  shortens  each  forward 
stride  in  education. 

The  subservience  of  our  state  universities  and 
normal  schools  to  political  domination  is  another 
important  factor  in  keeping  the  pace,  at  least  of 
higher  education,  well  within  the  average  rate.  At 
this  present  writing,  the  governor  of  a  great  south- 
western commonwealth  has  suddenly  cut  off  supplies 
from  its  new  university,  deeming  the  common  school 
in  which  he  got  his  only  education  sufficient  for 
state  welfare,  and  all  further  culture  —  liberal  or 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  19 

scientific  —  an  idle  waste  of  public  revenue.  The 
case  is  flagrant  and  extreme  yet  one  of  the  great 
problems  of  American  education,  as  indeed  of  every 
department  of  American  life,  is  overcoming  just  this 
tyranny  of  the  average,  and  saving  the  best  culture 
of  our  land  from  stifling  beneath  the  stodgy  and  self- 
satisfied  perfection  of  the  commonplace.  But  this 
is  only  the  reverse  side  of  an  amazing  and  splendid 
spectacle,  a  rising  average,  a  more  rapid  widening 
of  the  circle  of  culture  and  education  than  has  been 
witnessed  in  any  age  by  any  other  civilization. 


POLITICS 

In  political  life,  the  same  phenomenon  appears. 
A  sort  of  people  are  voting  in  America  who  never 
before  in  the  history  of  the  world  have  shared  in  the 
government  of  any  country.  The  results  are  apparent 
in  governmental  clumsiness  and  inefficiency ;  but  those 
persons  who  criticize  our  government  for  its  bungling, 
often  forget  the  counterbalancing  value  of  the  ballot 
as  an  educative  force.  There  are  two  conceptions 
of  government :  first,  that  it  is  a  machine  to  get  done 
certain  necessary  public  business ;  second  (and  this 
is  the  democratic  view),  that  popular  government  is 
a  means  of  raising  the  level  of  social  conscience  and 
intelligence  by  bringing  the  people  into  direct  con- 
tact with  public  issues.  Our  democratic  suffrage  is 
a  great  popular  university  —  unfortunately  not  as 
yet  coeducational,  for  while  many  claims  made  for 


20  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

woman  suffrage  are  extravagant,  the  ballot  cannot 
fail  to  be  a  liberal  education  to  women.  This  view 
of  government  does  not  mean,  however,  that  we 
should  put  up  with  an  inefficient  administration 
forever  just  because  it  may  seem  representative. 
Government  must  keep  pace  with  the  actual  level 
of  rising  public  intelligence,  as  it  has  not  always  done, 
although  commission  and  city  manager  schemes  are 
efforts  to  make  administration  both  efficient  and 
democratic.  But  the  essence  of  our  American  ex- 
periment is  that  we  should  be  patient  with  a  certain 
amount  of  clumsiness  while  the  public  learns  by 
doing. 

And  learning  we  are  to  an  extent  even  greater 
than  is  indicated  by  a  liberal  suffrage,  for  suffrage 
itself  is  becoming  much  more  educative  as  govern- 
ment changes  its  character  and  grows  more  and 
more  complex  and  comprehensive.  Not  so  very 
long  ago,  governments  existed  to  protect  the  nation 
from  within  and  without  by  police  and  military 
power  and  to  collect  taxes  for  the  support  of  these  de- 
fensive agencies.  We  are  now  in  the  throes  of  a 
great  struggle  which  has  raised  this  vestigial  gov- 
ernmental object  to  a  temporary  position  of  para- 
mount importance.  But  for  the  modern  world, 
this  is  an  abnormal  situation,  precipitated  by  a 
people  out  of  step  with  international  progress.  In 
years  of  peace,  defense,  though  essential,  is  insignifi- 
cant beside  the  great  constructive  social  activity  of 
the  state.  Life  and  limb,  health,  morals,  happiness, 
wealth  and  comfort,  education,  culture  and  the  arts, 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  21 

science,  industry  and  agriculture,  housing,  city 
planning,  recreation ;  the  whole  intricate  machinery 
of  daily  living,  eating,  sleeping,  and  going  abroad 
to  work  and  play ;  all  these  occupy  the  attention  of 
department  after  department,  official  after  official  of 
our  city,  state,  and  national  administrations,  and  it 
is  to  the  direction  and  improvement  of  these  various 
phases  of  national  life  that  the  revenues  of  taxation 
are  normally  directed. 

This  new  emphasis  in  government,  manifest  in  the 
conduct  of  every  unit  from  village  to  nation,  is 
made  far  more  significant  by  the  increasing  tendency 
of  American  legislation  to  be  direct  instead  of  in- 
direct and  representative.  Laws  are  the  steps  up 
which  we  climb  toward  what  we  have  glimpsed  but 
not  yet  surely  reached.  Men  progress  from  bondage 
to  freedom  not  by  overthrowing  but  by  becoming  the 
law,  by  making  the  guiding  principle  a  part  of  their 
own  nature  and  not  an  outward  formal  restriction 
upon  conduct.  Any  law  is  in  its  existence  and  en- 
forcement an  educative  fact,  but  the  initiative  and 
referendum  put  the  citizen  to  school  for  life,  espe- 
cially when  exerted  over  the  wide  topical  area  now 
included  within  the  field  of  legislation.  The  multi- 
farious departments  of  local  and  federal  government 
deal  with  subjects  upon  which  the  average  voter 
has  scarcely  thought  till  called  upon  to  elect  candi- 
dates for  office.  The  bills  introduced  into  city 
councils  and  state  legislatures  concern  questions  new 
to  the  average  popular  representative.  Government 
more  and  more  opens  the  eye  of  the  officeholder  to 


22  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

the  essential  solidarity  of  humanity ;  exerts  upon  all 
who  move  in  the  political  arena  a  more  and  more 
liberalizing  and  stimulating  influence;  demands  of 
public  servants  and  voters  alike  a  greater  and  greater 
degree  of  vision,  intelligence,  and  efficiency.  And 
now  more  than  ever  in  America  will  this  be  true  as 
the  political  horizon  of  our  country  widens  to  include 
international  as  well  as  national  issues.  The  voter  of 
to-morrow,  by  simply  attaining  his  majority,  becomes 
an  arbiter  of  fate  for  men  across  the  sea  who  until  to- 
day never  seemed  to  move  upon  the  same  life  current 
as  himself ;  of  whom  he  knows  and  understands  little ; 
yet  whom  he  must  know  and  understand  if  inter- 
national peace  and  cooperation  are  to  be  more  than  a 
poet's  dream. 


INDUSTRY 

And  what  is  the  status  of  our  industrial  world 
to-day  ?  Extreme  specialization  in  processes  and 
occupations ;  a  resulting  decay  in  apprenticeship 
which  necessitates  school  provision  for  vocational 
education;  centralization  of  industrial  control;  and 
intricate  and  absolute  interdependence  of  the  whole 
fabric  of  productive  activity  —  these  are  the  well- 
known  hall  marks  of  our  modern  industrial  organiza- 
tion. But  there  are  two  changes  in  this  familiar 
system  which  we  must  learn  to  anticipate ;  of  which, 
in  fact,  the  signs  are  rife :  the  socialization  of  produc- 
tion to  a  much  larger  extent  than  we  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  expect,  and  the  democratizing  of  industry 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  23 

as  the  workers  themselves  share  more  and  more  in 
the  direction  of  business.  As  evidence  of  the  social- 
ization of  production,  I  need  mention  only  municipal 
ownership  of  public  utilities,  streets,  water  power, 
light,  gas,  electricity,  transit  and  heating  systems ; 
and  national  ownership  of  natural  resources,  the  post 
office,  the  parcels  post,  and  perhaps  of  the  railways 
and  a  merchant  marine.  Moreover,  minimum  wage 
laws,  working  men's  compensation  acts,  laws  gov- 
erning the  hours  of  labor — in  fact  all  government 
regulation  of  industries,  whether  state  or  national, 
is  a  very  positive  semisocialization.  We  are  living 
under  a  progressively  socialized  system  of  production 
where  the  general  public  as  voters  exercise  more  and 
more  supervision  over  the  conduct  of  business  if 
they  do  not  actually  conduct  publicly  owned  busi- 
ness enterprises.  And  if  other  socializing  forces  had 
been  lacking,  the  War  would  have  written  the  death 
sentence  of  individualistic  business  method ;  for  the 
sudden  vast  centralization  of  transportation,  com- 
merce, agriculture,  and  industry  in  this  country  and 
abroad  and  their  common  direction  toward  a  public 
purpose  which  have  arisen  as  a  war  economy,  must 
remain  in  part  at  its  close  as  the  natural  and  efficient 
productive  system  of  a  social  world. 

Mr.  Louis  Brandeis,  during  his  testimony  before 
the  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations  as  to  the 
causes  of  industrial  unrest,  voiced  an  interesting 
opinion  concerning  the  democratizing  of  industry  by 
giving  the  workers  themselves  a  share  in  the  direc- 
tion of  business.  "My  observation  leads  me  to 


24  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

believe  that  while  there  are  many  causes  contributing 
to  unrest,  there  is  one  cause  which  is  fundamental, 
and  that  is  the  conflict  between  our  political  liberty 
and  our  industrial  absolutism."  Mr.  Brandeis  goes 
on  to  show  how  while  every  man  supposedly  has  his 
voice  in  the  government,  industry  has  been  a  state 
within  a  state,  an  absolutism  within  a  democracy, 
an  absolutism  in  which  the  worker  has  no  vote. 
This  absolutism  may  be  very  benevolent,  but  still 
the  worker  has  no  voice  in  determining  the  condi- 
tions under  which  he  works,  the  wages  he  gets,  or  the 
general  conduct  of  the  business.  "These  problems," 
he  says,  "are  not  purely  the  employers'  problems. 
They  are  the  problems  of  the  trade  —  of  both  em- 
ployer and  employee.  No  mere  liberality  in  the 
division  of  the  proceeds  of  industry  car  meet  this 
situation.  There  must  be  a  division  not  only  of 
the  profits,  but  a  division  of  the  responsibilities; 
and  the  men  must  have  the  opportunity  of  deciding 
in  part  what  shall  be  their  condition  and  how  the 
business  shall  be  run.  They  also  as  a  part  of  that 
responsibility,  must  learn  that  they  must  bear  the  fatal 
results  of  mistakes,  just  as  the  employers  do.  Unless 
we  establish  an  industrial  democracy,  unrest  will 
not  only  continue,  but  in  my  opinion  will  grow 
worse."  These  are  not  the  words  of  a  radical  and 
an  agitator,  but  the  utterance  of  a  man  who  has  a  life 
job  in  the  most  conservative  corporation  in  the  United 
States,  our  real  governing  body,  the  Supreme  Court.1 

1  See  similar  statement  of  federal  commission  to  investigate  shipyard 
labor  troubles  and  I.  W.  W.  activities  in  mines  and  lumber  fields. 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  25 

Side  by  side  with  brutal  outgrowths  of  industrial 
tyranny  like  the  recent  race  riots  of  East  St.  Louis, 
there  is  abundant  evidence  that  the  industrial 
democracy  of  which  Judge  Brandeis  spoke  is  on 
the  way.  The  fact  is  recognized  even  in  capitalistic 
strongholds.  Examples  of  profit  sharing,  too  numer- 
ous to  mention,  very  frankly  admit  the  rights  of 
workers  to  be  larger  than  we  had  supposed.  There 
are  businesses  where  a  representative  of  labor  sits 
on  the  board  of  directors.  One  reads  of  the  estab- 
lishment of  numerous  cooperative  enterprises,  espe- 
cially on  the  Pacific  coast.  The  Federal  War  Labor 
Board  has  already  stated  in  its  program  and  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  has  written  into  the 
1918  Man  Power  Bill  the  proposition  that,  for  the 
period  of  the  War  at  least,  employers  shall  bargain 
collectively  with  their  employees;  that  in  case  of 
failure  to  reach  a  mutual  agreement,  differences 
must  be  settled  collectively  through  the  Federal 
War  Labor  Board ;  and  that  failure  thus  to  bargain 
or  submit  unsettled  differences  shall  automatically 
waive  all  draft  claims  of  either  employer  or  employee 
for  exemption  based  on  supposed  industrial  service 
to  the  government  in  her  hour  of  need.  As  a  meas- 
ure of  war  efficiency,  the  government  of  the  United 
States  has  established  the  principle  of  industrial 
democracy.  And  last  but  most  significant,  even 
before  the  War,  the  power  of  organized  labor  in  de- 
termining business  policy  through  collective  bar- 
gaining and  through  the  exertion  of  such  political 
influence  as  secured  the  passage  of  the  Adamson 


26  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

Act,  is  proof  positive  that  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  a 
new  element  is  entering  into  the  industrial  councils 
of  the  nation.  Just  as  politics  and  education  are 
feeling  the  new  democratic  influx,  so  industry  must 
anticipate  and  prepare  for  the  same  readjustment. 
That  this  industrial  readjustment  will  be  slow  and 
difficult  is  easy  to  foresee,  perhaps  even  more  difficult 
than  the  political  struggle  for  representative  govern- 
ment and  popular  suffrage,  extending  through  the 
centuries  and  punctuated  by  such  bloody  crises  as 
the  French,  the  Mexican,  and  the  Russian  revolu- 
tions. The  mutual  attitude  of  the  two  parties  to 
the  industrial  contest  is  not  suggestive  of  ready 
compromise  and  conciliation.  A  writer,  in  a  current 
weekly,  strikingly  pictures  the  limitations  in  the 
democratic  vision  of  our  capitalistic  class  and  all 
those  whose  interests  and  ideas  lie  upon  the  capital- 
ist's side.  "A  man  acquainted  with  political  affairs 
who  will  spend  three  months  in  Washington  meeting 
business  men  coming  on  war  business  to  the  national 
capital  from  all  parts  of  the  United  States  would 
find  it  difficult  not  to  conclude  that  American  busi- 
ness men,  all  in  all,  in  spite  of  their  splendid  patriot- 
ism, are  the  most  reactionary  class  of  industrial 
rulers  in  the  civilized  world.  For  an  astonishing 
number  of  them,  the  whole  labor  movement,  which 
has  given  us  trade  union  governments  in  the  Antip- 
odes, cabinets  speckled  with  Socialists  in  virtually 
every  free  country  in  Europe,  and  a  labor  man  as 
prime  minister  of  England,  is  not  a  movement  at 
all.  It  is  nothing  but  a  'trouble.'  The  very  demo- 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  27 

cratic  impulse  that  is  shaking  and  remaking  the 
world,  thrusts  a  finger  in  their  factories,  and  they 
see  nothing  but  'labor  trouble'  invented  by  outside 
agitators." 

This  is  natural  and  explainable  enough.  The 
average  business  owner  or  manager  still  thinks  of 
his  business  as  peculiarly  and  privately  his  own. 
Let  a  strike  occur  in  his  factory :  nine  times  out  of 
ten  he  would  grant  the  demands  of  the  strikers  if 
that  did  not  involve  dealing  with  a  trade  union; 
nine  times  out  of  ten  he  is  a  kind-hearted  and  gen- 
erous person  who  would  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket 
quickly  enough  to  help  a  worker  in  distress  if  only 
the  distress  came  vividly  to  his  attention  in  an  acci- 
dental way.  But  he  will  waste  money  in  a  losing 
fight,  close  his  factory,  call  in  troops  or  hired  police, 
risk  the  shedding  of  blood,  refuse  all  the  appeals  of 
common  humanity,  close  his  mind  to  logic,  self- 
interest,  or  friendly  persuasion  simply  because,  as 
he  puts  it,  he  will  have  no  one  dictating  to  him  how  to 
run  his  business.  His  business :  in  those  two  words 
lies  the  root  of  trouble,  the  key  to  his  state  of  mind. 
There  is  nothing  remarkable  or  inhuman  in  all  this, 
however  socially  awkward  the  results  may  be.  For 
centuries,  law  has  existed  for  the  protection  of 
propertied  interests ;  money  and  privilege  have  been 
the  way  to  ownership ;  labor  has  been  regarded 
solely  as  a  commodity  to  be  bought  and  sold  in  the 
cheapest  market.  Naturally,  the  man  who  has 
put  the  original  money  into  an  enterprise  thinks  he 
owns  the  business ;  the  managers  whom  he  had  dele- 


28  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

gated  think  of  the  business  as  his  and  theirs  to 
govern  as  they  choose.  The  idea  that  it  may  also 
be  the  business  of  the  clerks  and  operators  who  toil 
in  its  offices  and  factories  is  alien  to  their  way  of 
thought.  Yet  these  others  too  put  into  the  con- 
cern their  work,  their  brains,  their  time,  their  inter- 
est, their  whole  productive  energy.  They  too  de- 
pend upon  its  conduct  for  the  whole  fabric  of  their 
lives,  depend  on  it,  in  fact,  much  more  completely 
than  the  owner,  who  probably  will  have  other  inter- 
ests and  resources.  In  a  terribly  vital  sense,  it  is 
their  business,  into  which  they  put  their  all;  from 
which  they  receive  their  all.  Yet  this  fact  there  has 
been  little  in  life,  in  law,  or  in  education  to  make 
the  owner  understand.  He  begins  to  see  that  his 
factory  is  in  some  occult  way  the  business  of  the 
government;  grudgingly  or  ungrudgingly,  he  com- 
plies with  legal  standards  of  hours,  pay,  safety,  and 
sanitation.  But  that  it  is  the  business  of  his  em- 
ployees as  well,  he  cannot  feel.  If  you  would  un- 
derstand the  spiritual  tragedy  of  King  John  sign- 
ing the  Magna  Charta,  of  a  Tsar  creating  a  Duma, 
or  of  the  House  of  Lords  yielding  their  veto,  study 
a  business  man  in  the  throes  of  a  successful  strike. 
There  is  a  pathos  in  conscientious  reactionism  which 
we  often  overlook. 

Yet  gaze  now  at  the  other  side  of  the  same  picture. 
The  summer  of  1916  witnessed  the  passage  of  the 
Adamson  Act,  whose  provisions  most  men  will  sanc- 
tion yet  whose  method  of  passage  many  will  deplore. 
Refusing  to  arbitrate,  wielding  its  new-found  power 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  29 

of  organization,  labor  fell  back  upon  the  stone  age 
argument  of  force  and  compelled  the  passage  of 
the  measure.  It  is  easy  to  see  where  labor  learned 
to  use  this  method.  For  centuries  capital  has 
manipulated  government  and  legislation  for  its  own 
ends ;  and  it  is  not  strange  that  now  that  labor  has 
at  length  the  power,  labor  should  follow  suit!  In 
Russia  to-day,  we  see  the  frank  expression  of  serf 
and  wage  slave  philosophy.  The  worker  would 
take  over  industry;  the  peasant  would  take  over 
landed  estates.  To  the  syndicalist,  the  maximalist, 
the  direct  actionist,  all  industry  is  as  emphatically 
the  property  of  the  workers  as,  to  the  capitalist,  it 
is  the  property  of  the  owner.  Invested  capital, 
enterprise,  business  imagination,  the  creative  idea 
are  nothing !  Labor  is  all :  labor  creates  ownership. 
And  the  bitterness  of  the  proletariat  is  no  less  black 
and  stubborn  than  that  of  capital.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  blindness  of  long  and  undisturbed  possession ; 
on  the  other,  the  blindness  born  of  age-long  injustice 
and  oppression.  Here  is  the  situation  which  Gals- 
worthy has  drawn  so  sympathetically  for  England 
in  his  early  play  of  Strife.  Here  is  the  situation 
which  produced  the  industrial  ferment  of  the  first 
few  months  of  American  participation  in  the  War, 
months  when  labor  feared  that  the  United  States, 
repeating  the  now  rectified  mistakes  of  England, 
would  in  the  name  of  patriotism  take  from  labor  its 
new  and  hard-won  standards  of  hours,  work,  and 
pay.  Here  is  the  situation  into  which  as  formers  of 
an  internal  policy,  we  are  sending  year  by  year  the 


30  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

products  of  our  public  schools.  And  here  is  a  sit- 
uation which  it  behooves  the  public  school  teachers 
to  study,  with  prejudice  against  neither  side  and 
with  sympathy  for  both,  in  order  to  determine  the 
subtle  psychological  causes  which  make  of  indus- 
trial readjustment  so  thorny  and  steep  a  path;  in 
order  to  remove  the  barriers  of  misunderstanding 
between  class  and  class;  in  order  to  bring  capital 
and  labor  together  in  generous  and  friendly  coopera- 
tion for  a  larger  end. 


NATIONALISM  AND  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY 

The  expansion  of  the  area  of  our  political  duties 
and  activities,  emphasized  by  the  War  and  certain 
to  be  definitely  outlined  in  the  program  for  interna- 
tional peace  and  cooperation  at  its  close,  brings 
sharply  before  the  United  States  the  necessity  for 
evolving  a  conscious  national  spirit,  a  national  aim, 
and  an  international  policy. 

It  is  a  platitude  that  the  United  States  has  as  yet 
no  such  spirit,  aim,  or  policy  :  and  it  is  seriously  ques- 
tioned by  many  thinking  persons  whether  this  lack 
of  nationalism  is  not  just  the  priceless  American 
virtue;  whether  lively  national  spirit  and  definite 
national  aims  are  not  at  once  a  menace  to  the  world 
and  a  shackle  upon  national  progress.  Is  it  perhaps 
the  crowning  liberalism  of  American  citizenship  that 
it  implies  nothing  in  common  with  other  Americans 
save  our  common  humanity  ?  Might  not  the  de- 
velopment of  a  sturdy  and  self-conscious  American- 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  31 

ism  lead  at  length  to  the  same  national  egotism 
which  has  brought  Germany  to  the  conviction  of 
her  cultural  superiority,  of  her  right  to  exploit  or 
displace  all  supposedly  inferior  peoples,  and  of  her 
sacred  duty  to  Prussianize  the  world  ?  May  not 
we  too,  in  striving  for  the  evolution  of  a  strong, 
differentiated,  national  culture,  ultimately  rear  a 
Chinese  wall  of  exclusion  at  our  intellectual  fron- 
tiers ;  may  we  not  limit  our  national  imagination, 
develop  cultural  intolerance  and  inhospitality,  un- 
dermine our  sense  of  humor  and  proportion,  shut 
off  the  wholesome  stream  of  outside  influence  which 
has  so  largely  contributed  to  the  formation  of  our 
race,  our  language,  our  culture,  and  our  ideals,  cripple 
and  narrow  our  national  life  by  inbreeding,  and 
produce  one  of  these  days  an  America-mania  different 
from  but  no  less  obnoxious  than  the  idolatry  of 
Germanism  which  has  made  possible  not  only  the 
present  war  itself,  but  all  those  special  phases  of 
Prussian  military  tactics  which  have  proved  so 
incomprehensible  to  humanity  at  large  ? 

These  are  indeed  dangers  which  must  be  squarely 
faced  by  educators  before  agreeing,  as  we  are  in 
these  days  so  often  urged  to  do,  upon  a  scheme  for 
fostering  through  schooling  a  crystallized,  conscious, 
American  national  spirit  as  distinguished  from  the 
English,  French,  German,  Russian,  Italian,  or  Jap- 
anese national  spirit  of  other  races.  We  do  not 
wish  to  develop  an  arrogant  Americanism  partaking 
of  the  now  obvious  vices  which  the  War  reveals  as 
having  lurked  in  the  very  texture  of  the  finished  and 


32  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

so  often  charming  life  of  Germany  before  the  War. 
And  if  those  vices  are  the  logical  outcome  of  any 
nationalism  whatsoever,  then  indeed  we  shall  not 
care  to  develop  a  racial  sense  at  all,  but  shall  rather 
rest  content  with  the  ill-defined  individualism  of  our 
former  policy,  an  individualism  well  characterized 
by  our  attitude  toward  immigration,  which  we  talk 
much  of  assimilating  yet  which  we  satisfy  ourselves 
with  denationalizing. 

The  War,  however,  cannot  but  call  to  our  attention 
certain  practical  advantages  of  a  more  lively  na- 
tional consciousness  than  we  in  America  have  yet 
achieved.  The  immense  mass  and  impact  of  United 
Germany  have  dealt  civilization  a  blow  from  which 
it  still  is  staggering,  and  while  undeniably  dangerous 
as  an  aggressive  weapon,  this  national  strength, 
flowing  in  other  channels,  might  have  enormous 
value  for  the  world.  At  the  outset  of  the  War,  what 
brought  the  whole  human,  industrial,  commercial, 
cultural,  and  educational  resources  of  France,  almost 
overnight,  into  the  service  of  the  nation  ?  Danger 
of  invasion,  you  perhaps  will  say.  The  instant  need 
of  holding  soil  on  which  to  lead  French  lives  in  the 
French  way  did  indeed  make  the  response  imme- 
diate ;  but  what  created  such  effective  patriotism  ? 
The  consciousness  of  every  French  man,  woman, 
and  child  of  being  French  and  of  what  it  meant  to 
be  French  rather  than  English,  German,  or  Italian ; 
the  consciousness  that  all  that  France  held  dear  was 
threatened  by  a  deadly  foe,  that  the  great  history 
of  the  French  people  called  from  the  past  for  con- 


THE   WORLD  TO-DAY  33 

tinuance  and  completion ;  the  consciousness  bred 
in  every  Frenchman  from  childhood  in  the  schools 
of  the  Republic  that  to  the  government  of  which  he 
himself  is  a  responsible  director  and  from  which  he 
derives  his  training,  his  comfort,  and  his  safety,  to 
that  government  in  her  hour  of  trial,  he  owes  all  that 
he  has  or  is  or  can  at  best  become.  These  are  the 
factors  which  produced  in  France  at  the  beginning 
of  the  War  a  solidarity  which  withstood  alone  and 
comparatively  ill  prepared  the  greatest  military 
shock  in  history ;  these  are  the  factors  which  have 
enabled  France  to  sustain  through  the  long  years  of 
war  her  heroic  effort  and  increasing  sacrifice.  The 
United  States  has  never  had  such  a  constructive 
patriotic  program.  The  War  has  indeed  brought  to 
America  a  fuller  pulse  of  national  life;  and  each 
person  who  has  given  in  time,  money,  or  effort,  to 
the  common  cause  has  shared  the  national  awaken- 
ing. Never  before  have  the  young  men  enrolled  in  our 
army  felt  so  thrillingly  that  they  are  all  Americans ; 
never  have  Americans  so  clearly  seen  what  this  land 
of  ours  at  bottom  means,  and  what  are  those  prin- 
ciples of  human  freedom  which  our  people  stand 
ready  at  any  cost  to  save.  Like  all  unselfish  wars, 
this  struggle  has  produced  a  renaissance  of  national 
idealism,  a  consecration  to  the  things  of  the  spirit, 
an  uplifting  willingness  to  do  and  dare  in  the  cause 
of  right.  But  this  awakening  to  our  national  unity, 
this  response  to  service  came  more  slowly  and  less 
effectively  in  America  than  we  would  wish.  The  edu- 
cational foundation  of  patriotic  responsibility  had 


84  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

not  been  laid  so  deep  as  in  older,  more  self-conscious 
countries.  At  the  close  of  the  War,  unless  some 
special  and  united  effort  is  put  forth  by  educational 
authorities  throughout  the  land,  the  glowing  warmth 
of  patriotic  enthusiasm  may  cool  again  into  our  old 
indifference,  and  another  calamity  may  be  needed 
to  spur  us  once  again  to  think  and  feel  on  national 
lines. 

This  would  mean  for  America  a  loss  not  only  in 
national  strength  but  in  individual  culture.  To  feel 
and  think  in  terms  of  many  men  is  to  enlarge  the 
personality.  In  one  of  his  last  published  articles, 
William  James  wrote  that  the  great  problem  of 
modern  civilization  is  to  find  a  moral  equivalent  for 
war,  a  social  motive  sufficiently  powerful,  a  collective 
experience  sufficiently  vivid  to  arouse  a  whole  people 
to  an  equal  consciousness  of  unity  and  stir  it  to 
equal  cooperative  effort.  Perhaps  this  moral  equiv- 
alent for  war  can  never  be  evolved.  But  if  it  is  to 
come,  it  must  rest  upon  the  same  basis  of  national 
feeling  and  desire  for  national  service.  The  value 
of  a  war  is  that  it  shocks  us  out  of  self ;  leads  us  to 
think  in  terms  of  moral  values  and  of  larger  social 
units  than  commonly  come  within  our  range  of 
calculation.  The  self,  the  family,  the  chum,  the 
gang,  the  school,  one's  social  set,  the  business  firm, 
the  neighborhood,  perhaps  the  community,  less 
probably  the  locality,  seldom  the  nation,  and  almost 
never  humanity  throughout  the  world  —  here  is  the 
history  of  social  consciousness  in  the  average  indi- 
vidual. To  tamper  with  this  expansion  of  human 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  35 

interest  at  any  of  its  stages  is  fatal  to  moral  growth. 
For  instance,  to  break  down  the  child's  loyalty  to 
his  chum  or  gang  by  any  miscalled  honor  system 
which  turns  each  individual  into  a  spy  is  the  greatest 
mistake  in  ethical  pedagogy.  It  destroys  the  high- 
est social  loyalty  the  child  yet  knows  before  a  wider 
loyalty  is  born  to  take  its  place  and,  instead  of  remov- 
ing its  limitations,  kills  the  golden  quality  itself. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  soundest  sociology  to 
stimulate  consciousness  of  the  group  next  above 
that  with  which  men's  present  interest  is  engaged. 
There  is  no  such  thing  in  evolution  as  skipping 
grades.  We  must  climb  the  ladder  rung  by  rung. 
The  nation  is  the  largest  social  unit  which  the  average 
mind  can  comprehend,  and  in  the  present  imperfect 
state  of  human  advancement,  we  shall  do  well  if  we 
secure  a  peace  time  sense  of  the  unity  of  national 
interests  and  ideals.  To  think  nationally  is  the  first 
step  toward  wider  international  sympathy ;  it  is  the 
historical  link  in  the  chain  of  progress ;  the  link  to 
whose  weakness  is  due  the  Russian  catastrophe ;  the 
link  we  in  America  have  never  purposefully  forged. 
Domineering  nations  are  indeed  the  weeds  of 
history  and  tend  to  choke  out  other  valuable  growths, 
but  the  world's  quarrel  with  such  peoples  lies  in  the 
form  and  not  the  fervor  of  their  national  spirit.  If, 
then,  a  national  consciousness  must  be  our  goal, 
what  form  shall  we  wish  it  to  assume  ?  What  object 
can  we  set  before  our  citizens  which  will  have  im- 
pelling force  yet  never  ripen  into  national  aggres- 
sion ?  The  logic  of  events  is  giving  us  the  answer. 


36  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

We  live  in  stirring  times.  Little  by  little,  century  by 
century ;  from  the  Helot  uprisings  of  ancient  Sparta 
and  the  slave  revolts  of  classic  Rome ;  from  the  days 
of  Magna  Charta,  of  the  Jacquerie  in  France,  of 
Cromwell  in  England,  and  George  Washington  in 
America ;  through  the  bloody  terrors  of  the  French 
Revolution  and  the  bitter  agony  of  our  Civil  War ; 
little  by  little,  century  by  century,  man  has  won 
nearer  to  democracy,  nearer  to  a  world  in  which, 
free  of  tyranny  and  oppression,  free  of  bigotry  and 
intolerance,  free  of  poverty  and  ignorance,  each 
soul  shall  reach  the  full  fruition  of  its  individual 
powers.  Abolition  of  slavery  and  social  caste,  reli- 
gious freedom,  universal  suffrage,  popular  education 
and  government  recognition  of  the  right  of  labor  to 
a  living  and  a  life,  these  were  democratic  gains  of 
which  America  was  proud.  But  the  goal  was  not 
yet  surely  won,  and  we  scarcely  saw  as  yet  the  full 
implication  of  the  word  democracy. 

Then  came  the  War,  waking  us  from  our  placid 
acceptance  of  our  good  fortune  and  bringing  to  us  a 
clearer  and  more  comprehensive  understanding  of 
democracy.  With  the  threat  of  its  extinction,  came 
a  new  love  for  our  heritage  of  freedom  and  a  new 
determination  that  "government  of  the  people,  by 
the  people,  and  for  the  people  should  not  perish  from 
the  earth."  And  now  at  last  the  burden  of  defending 
democratic  institutions  has  fallen  on  America ;  Presi- 
dent Wilson's  great  phrase  "make  the  world  safe  for 
democracy"  rings  across  two  hemispheres,  a  new 
battle  cry  of  freedom ;  our  President  has  become  the 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  37 

spokesman  and  moral  leader  of  the  Allies ;  and  to 
us  the  nations  look  not  only  for  the  final  military 
victory  but  for  the  democratic  example  which  shall 
form  the  basis  of  the  coming  peace.  The  United 
States  is  the  great  social  experiment  of  civilization. 
We  have  as  Americans  not  only  to  fight  for  democ- 
racy on  the  shell-scarred  plains  of  France  but  to  es- 
tablish democracy  firmly  and  successfully  on  our  own 
soil,  there  to  stand  as  a  model  and  shining  inspiration 
for  the  world.  And  we  have  as  Americans  not  only 
to  construct  the  social  framework  of  democracy  but 
by  its  human  product  to  justify  democracy  to  all 
the  earth.  To  be  a  democracy  in  name  and  fact,  to 
live  as  well  as  die  for  our  ideals,  here  is  the  national 
purpose  for  which  we  must  retain  through  education 
the  thrilling  urgency  of  war-engendered  patriotism. 
"Peace  has  her  Belgiums"  whose  cry  went  long 
unheeded  in  the  days  before  the  War.  Socially,  re- 
ligiously, legally,  industrially,  politically  —  is  there 
need  to  enumerate  our  failures  ?  After  years  of 
effort,  we  had  at  length  secured  a  federal  law  pro- 
hibiting interstate  traffic  in  articles  manufactured  by 
child  labor.  This  law  did  not  affect  concerns  which 
cater  to  a  local  market;  and  in  laundries  and  tene- 
ment occupations,  in  theaters  and  shops,  in  the 
street  trades  so  dangerous  to  life  and  limb  and 
budding  soul,  even  in  industry,  evading  infrequent 
factory  inspection,  children  were  after  its  passage 
still  employed  in  many  and  many  a  state  throughout 
the  Union.  But  the  law  was  a  beginning  and  enun- 
ciated a  forward  looking  principle.  Now  the  Su- 


38  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

preme  Court  has,  on  a  mere  technicality,  declared 
the  bill  unconstitutional.  The  great  southern  cotton 
mills  are  calling  back  the  children  to  their  looms; 
the  fight  must  be  fought  again ;  another  generation 
must  stagger  prematurely  with  the  load  of  toil.  Is 
it  democracy  thus  to  prey  upon  the  weak  and  rob 
the  nation  at  its  very  fount  and  source  ?  We  have 
long  known  that  no  woman  can  live  decently  on 
less  than  eight  dollars  a  week,  yet  the  average  for 
working  women  is  nearer  six !  Is  that  democracy  ? 
In  a  western  mining  state,  a  great  corporation  elected, 
owned,  and  operated  every  political  official  in  its 
county,  including  the  judge  in  whose  court  cases 
between  this  corporation  and  its  employees  were 
tried.  Was  that  democracy  ?  And  when  the  under- 
standable discontent  of  the  miners  in  that  district 
with  these  and  other  conditions  of  their  life  and 
work  culminated  in  organized  agitation,  a  long  and 
bloody  strike  ensued  because  of  the  refusal  of  the 
company  to  meet  with,  treat  with,  or  recognize  the 
collectively  elected  representatives  of  their  employ- 
ees. Was  that  democracy  ?  The  terrible  story  of 
East  St.  Louis  is  still  vivid  in  our  minds,  the  story 
of  how  the  bitterness  of  a  long  industrial  struggle 
coupled  with  the  stupidity  of  race  hatred  culminated 
in  a  night  of  savagery  which  an  eye  witness  stigma- 
tized as  "worse  than  Belgium."  Indeed  and  indeed, 
America  was  scarcely  a  democracy. 

And  when  our  methods  were  in  themselves  demo- 
cratic, they  were  often  far  from  being  efficiently 
and  successfully  so.  From  day  to  day  as  the  War 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  39 

went  on,  one  weakness  after  another  in  our  body 
politic  appeared.  The  mutual  failure  of  labor  and 
capital  to  reach  a  working  agreement,  which  we 
tolerated  as  a  mere  annoyance  in  times  of  peace, 
suddenly  in  this  hour  of  peril  when  our  very  national 
existence  depended  on  swift  production,  was  seen  at 
last  in  its  true  light  as  an  unpardonable  and  calam- 
itous national  negligence.  In  the  copper  mines  of 
Arizona,  the  Pacific  oil  and  lumber  fields,  and  the 
packing  and  the  shipping  industries,  the  industrial 
turmoil  which  we  at  first  explained  as  German 
propaganda,  a  federal  commission  has  attributed  to 
faults  long  latent  in  our  industrial  situation.  We 
have  allowed  labor  to  remain  ignorant,  capital  to 
remain  democratically  unprogressive ;  and  now  we 
see  the  slowness  with  which  uneducated  labor  and 
undemocratic  capital  subordinate  a  grievance  to 
national  ideals.  The  sluggish,  expensive,  redupli- 
cative, diffuse,  and  blundering  system  which  we 
have  long  accepted  in  lieu  of  government,  suddenly 
betrays  its  incapacity  when  called  upon  to  act  in 
national  defense.  The  inconsistency  of  our  legisla- 
tive economy  reveals  itself  when,  with  Anti-Trust 
laws  upon  our  statutes,  we  consolidate  war  produc- 
tion in  the  interest  of  efficiency.  The  laxness  of 
our  civic  habits  comes  strangely  into  light  when  we 
must  reorganize  municipal  police  and  sanitary  codes 
to  make  our  cities  safe  recreation  centers  for  our 
soldiery.  Feeling  here  and  there  with  subtle  fingers, 
the  great  strain  of  war  has  found  out  one  by  one  the 
weak  spots  in  our  national  life.  We  have  stood  the 


40  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

strain  —  splendidly.  But  we  know  where  we  have 
felt  it  most.  After  the  War,  let  us  take  stock  of 
our  democracy  and  recast  our  institutions  in  a  finer, 
purer,  stronger  democratic  mold.  Count  Okuma, 
'*  the  oldest,  most  experienced,  and  ablest  statesman 
of  Japan,"  watching  the  present  occidental  conflict 
with  his  impersonal  vision,  foresees  in  it  the  death 
of  European  civilization.  It  is  for  nations  like  the 
United  States  which  may  emerge  still  unbroken  from 
the  struggle  to  arrest  the  force  of  dissolution;  to 
lift,  purge,  and  fortify  our  civilization ;  to  keep  in 
every  phase  of  life  "those  heights"  which,  war 
inspired,  the  national  soul  "has  soared  to  reach"  ; 
to  make  of  the  period  after  the  War,  not  the  twilight 
which  the  Orient  sees  falling  upon  the  western  world, 
but  "another  morning  risen  on  midnoon,"  a  rebirth 
and  reconstruction. 

But  to  recast  our  institutions  in  this  democratic 
mold  is  the  means  and  not  the  end  of  national  con- 
sciousness Peoples,  like  individuals,  have  here- 
tofore been  spurred  to  effort  largely  by  the  need  for 
self-protection  or  the  desire  for  larger  spheres  of 
power  through  material  possessions.  It  will  be  for 
America  to  shift  the  emphasis.  Not  the  acquisi- 
tion of  territory  at  the  expense  of  other  nations, 
not  the  humiliation  of  other  races,  not  the  exer- 
tion of  power  in  the  concerns  of  other  peoples  than 
our  own  shall  be  our  aim,  but  the  justification  of 
democracy  by  its  human  product,  the  enrichment  of 
personality  by  a  freer  and  fuller  common  life.  For 
such  an  emphasis,  our  times  are  ripe.  The  War  has 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  41 

awakened  us  to  those  deficiencies  in  our  democracy 
which  limit  not  only  our  national  strength  but  the 
material  welfare  of  our  individual  citizens ;  and  it 
remains  only  to  apply  these  hard-won  lessons  to 
our  political  and  industrial  organization  in  order  to 
give  to  each  American  the  economic  foundation  for 
personal  culture.  Our  national  resources  are  tamed 
and  harnessed  to  the  wheels  of  industry;  the  basic 
struggle  for  existence  in  America  is  won,  and  abun- 
dance waits  on  man  for  distribution.  A  population 
blent  of  the  hardy  and  adventurous  elements  of 
every  nation  holds  our  soil.  The  brilliance  and  vigor 
of  our  climate  is  at  work  bronzing  and  energizing 
our  racial  stock,  quickening  the  pace  of  life,  and 
eliminating  generation  by  generation  the  weakling 
and  the  sluggard  who  survive  in  milder,  grayer  at- 
mospheres. To  achieve  a  rich  and  resourceful  back- 
ground of  national  culture,  it  remains  only  to  shape 
this  rough-hewn  substance  into  a  form  expressive 
of  its  inner  meaning ;  to  create  in  manners  and  cus- 
toms, in  art  and  music,  in  poetry,  fiction,  and  drama, 
in  dress  and  architecture,  in  commerce,  industry,  and 
agriculture  spontaneous  outgrowths  of  American 
feeling ;  modes,  and  materials  of  life  assistant  to  our 
human  development.  Where  the  American  home 
clings  to  the  soil  with  the  homely  weight  of  native 
stone,  simple,  spacious,  and  hospitable,  matching 
the  rock-strewn  slopes  from  which  it  rises  in  fit  and 
natural  beauty  ;  where  the  business  structure  springs 
to  heaven  with  the  daring  leap  of  high  finance,  we 
have  achieved  American  architecture ;  made  of  our 


42  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

i 

shelter  a  larger  body,  flesh  of  our  flesh,  bone  of  our 
bone,  filled  by  the  same  soul.  When  every  life  is 
lived  to  its  full  measure,  when  every  act  and  tool  of 
life  share  this  expressiveness,  the  purpose  of  Ameri- 
can national  consciousness  will  be  fulfilled. 

This  purpose  has  in  view,  however,  no  narrow,  self- 
centered  culture.  A  mode  of  life  reaches  perfection 
at  the  moment  when  it  ceases  to  be  valuable.  To 
be  oneself  most  fully  and  completely,  yet  to  be 
affable  to  the  new  and  strange,  tolerant  of  the  dif- 
ferent, interested  in  the  infinite  variety  of  the  world's 
human  output,  and  constantly  adding  to  one's  na- 
ture new  congenial  elements  —  that  is  to  make  the 
most  of  oneself  as  a  human  being.  No  gain  at  the 
expense  of  another  is  a  gain  in  personality ;  it  is  a 
"deadly  deduction"  from  the  sum  total  of  our  being. 
As  I  appreciate  and  enter  into  the  life  and  tastes 
of  my  brother,  I  become  a  richer  nature,  appropri- 
ating vicariously  his  virtue  for  my  own.  I  share 
with  him  his  superiorities.  So  also  with  nations. 
To  study  and  understand  another  national  culture, 
is  to  become  that  much  the  richer  by  the  contact. 
The  world  will  be  humanly  poor  only  when  it  is 
uniform.  America  is  the  living  proof  that  the 
European  War  was  unnecessary,  that  varying 
cultures  can  meet  and  interpenetrate  —  America, 
the  land  where  the  sons  of  many  nations  live  freely 
side  by  side  in  mutual  respect,  contributing  to  and 
sharing  a  richer  and  more  varied  common  life;  a 
land  of  provinces,  where  East  and  West,  North  and 
South,  mountain  and  prairie  develop  their  own  man- 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  43 

ners  and  customs,  creeds  and  dialects,  art  and  liter- 
ature, yet  where  North  and  South,  East  and  West, 
mountain  and  prairie  join  hands  in  union,  sharing 
a  common  aim,  breathing  a  common  spirit,  e  pluribus 
unum,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable!  Our 
international  policy,  therefore,  must  surely  be  one 
of  tolerance  and  cooperation,  interchange,  and  fed- 
eration for  a  common  human  end. 

To  be  specific  then,  we  need  and  are  indeed  evolv- 
ing, to  meet  the  responsibilities  of  the  new  world- 
era  now  opening  before  us,  a  lively  national  purpose 
to  be  the  most  efficient  and  complete  democracy, 
intellectually,  industrially,  politically,  and  socially 
in  the  civilized  world;  and  an  international  policy 
which  would  apply  these  democratic  principles  co- 
operatively to  all  the  nations,  guaranteeing  to  every 
people  its  free  foothold  in  the  sun,  encouraging  the 
flowering  of  every  racial  culture,  great  or  small,  fa- 
cilitating the  interchange  of  human  values  through- 
out the  world,  and  providing  for  the  maintenance  of 
this  international  democracy  the  machinery  necessary 
for  its  security.  "We  stand  for  the  immediate 
establishment,  actually  as  a  part  of  the  treaty  of 
peace  with  which  the  present  war  will  end,  of  a 
universal  league  or  society  of  nations,  a  superna- 
tional  authority,  with  an  international  high  court  to 
try  all  justiciable  issues  between  nations ;  an  inter- 
national legislature  to  enact  such  common  laws  as 
can  be  mutually  agreed  upon,  an  international 
council  of  mediation  to  endeavor  to  settle  without 
ultimate  conflict  even  those  disputes  which  are  not 


44  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

justiciable"  and  an  international  combination  of 
forces  to  uphold  its  findings  against  any  outlaw  from 
the  common  lot.  What  form  this  League  of  Nations 
may  assume,  it  would  be  premature  to  prophesy. 
But  America  must  stand  before  the  world  as  the 
champion  of  "  a  concert  of  power,  an  organized  com- 
mon peace,  a  world  safe  for  democracy." 


PREPARATION  FOR  SOCIAL  CITIZENSHIP 

American  life,  then,  cursorily  reviewed,  presents 
four  striking  aspects ;  a  rapidly  widening  circle  of 
culture ;  a  progressive  socialization  of  production  and 
democratization  of  industrial  control ;  a  system  of 
direct  and  popular  government  which,  while  liberal 
and  educative,  demands  of  the  citizen  increasing 
intelligence  and  efficiency;  and  a  growing  national 
consciousness  which  seeks  greatness  through  excel- 
lence and  international  cooperation.  For  the  com- 
plex tasks  of  her  national  and  international  future, 
America  is  whetting  her  tools.  But  the  educative 
work  of  life  is  slow ;  can  we  not  accelerate  its  deep, 
sure  processes  ? 

For  how  well,  in  spite  of  our  widening  circle  of 
culture  and  education,  are  we  as  yet  prepared  to 
meet  these  political  and  industrial  problems  of  our 
daily  life  ?  And  what  is  the  contribution  of  our 
common  schools  to  a  more  intelligent  citizenship 
and  a  better  social  order  ? 

Is  the  average  industrial  worker  or  the  average 


THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  45 

American  citizen,  for  that  matter,  fitted  to  take  over 
a  responsible  share  in  the  conduct  of  big  business  ? 
This  new  socialization  of  production,  this  new  democ- 
ratization of  industry  is  taking  place  at  a  time 
when,  owing  to  excessive  specialization  of  industrial 
processes  and  the  accompanying  decay  of  appren- 
ticeship, industry  is  unable  to  train  either  its  oper- 
atives or  its  managing  directors.  Industrial  educa- 
tion is  the  response  to  this  need  of  industry  for 
trained  workers ;  higher  technical  schools  are  the 
response  to  its  need  for  skilled  supervisors.  Now 
the  time  approaches  when  the  operative  must  join 
in  industrial  management;  but  what  conception 
of  the  whole  intricate  problem  of  manufacturing 
and  selling  shoes  can  an  operative  have  whose  only 
connection  with  the  matter  is  to  run  a  buttonhole  ma- 
chine day  by  day,  week  by  week,  month  by  month  ? 
How  wise  will  his  vote  be  in  deciding  the  policy  of 
the  concern  ?  Yet  as  a  union  member  or  a  voter  in  a 
city  where  franchises  are  up  for  approval,  he  is 
probably  contributing  his  share  to  business  adminis- 
tration. The  outsider  who,  even  in  sympathetic 
mood,  attends  trade  union  meetings,  is  constantly 
impressed  by  the  inevitably  one-sided  and  narrow 
character  of  their  deliberations.  The  workers  can- 
not see  the  business  of  manufacture  as  a  whole. 
They  see  their  own  corner  with  terrible  distinctness  ; 
the  rest  is  blank,  not  because  of  stupidity  or  malevo- 
lence on  their  part,  but  because  the  highly  specialized 
modern  factory  can  never  give  the  operative  the 
connected  view  of  an  industry  as  a  whole  which  is 


46  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

necessary  if  trade  unions  are  ever  to  cooperate  intel- 
ligently in  determining  conditions  of  labor  and  pay ; 
if  popular  legislation  is  to  be  fair,  constructive  and 
productive  of  prosperity ;  and  if  state  and  municipal 
ownership  is  to  become  more  than  a  by-word  for 
inefficiency. 

It  will  be  noted  here,  perhaps,  that  I  speak  not 
of  the  need  of  labor  for  industrial  skill  but  solely  for 
business  intelligence.  The  matter  of  vocational 
training  is  indeed  vital.1  Sooner  or  later,  in  the 
trade  schools  of  our  country,  every  American  youth 
of  either  sex  will  be  given  adequate  technical  prepa- 
ration for  wage-earning  work.  But  the  ordinary 
trade  training  which  has  now  become  a  part  of  every 
up-to-date  school  system  does  not  wholly  meet  the 
new  emergency.  Trade  Schools  study  mechanics; 
they  seldom  study  business,  and  the  grade  schools  in 
which  the  bulk  of  our  population  receive  their  only 
education  give  their  students  little  conception  of 
the  great  economic  and  social  forces  which  will 
determine  their  whole  after  life. 

Does  everyday  experience  on  the  other  hand  pre- 
pare the  worker  any  better  for  his  responsibility  in 
the  conduct  of  socialized  or  democratized  industry  ? 
Our  daily  life  is  fragmentary.  At  a  time  when  the 
duty  of  large-scale  social  thinking  is  thrust  upon  us, 
our  daily  round  brings  us  small-scale,  fractional  ex- 
periences. We  see  life  in  cross  section.  The  city 
child  seldom  sees  the  whole  of  any  process.  He 

1  See  The  People's  School :  a  Study  in  Vocational  Training  by  the 
author. 


,THE  WORLD  TO-DAY  47 

eats  the  vegetables  upon  the  table.  He  may  trace 
them  to  the  grocery.  Of  the  middle  man  who  han- 
dles, of  the  railway  that  carries,  and  of  the  farmer  who 
plants  and  cultivates  them,  he  has  no  picture.  The 
"store"  is  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  his  economic 
thinking.  The  intricate  human  business  of  produc- 
tion has  no  more  place  in  his  mind  than  in  the  magic 
tale  of  Aladdin  and  the  Wonderful  Lamp.  To  the 
country  child,  manufacture  and  commerce  are 
equally  mysterious.  School,  industry,  the  daily 
round  —  none  has  as  yet  equipped  the  citizen  for  the 
industrial  task  whose  performance  will  determine  his 
own  happiness  and  the  welfare  of  the  productive 
agencies  of  the  nation. 

The  school  has  ignored  the  problem;  daily  life 
obscures  it ;  the  modern  organization  of  industry  has 
only  added  to  its  complication.  For,  as  we  have 
already  pointed  out,  on  the  one  side  industry  has 
produced  the  capitalist  employer,  separated  from 
personal  contact  with  his  workmen ;  regarding  them 
more  or  less  inevitably  as  cogs  in  the  machine ;  and 
feeling  toward  the  labor  organizer  who  dares  to 
meddle  with  his  factory  much  the  same  sense  of 
personal  outrage  as  the  husband  who  goes  out  with 
a  gun  to  seek  the  villain  who  has  touched  his  own, 
private,  personal,  and  particular  wife :  while  on  the 
other  hand,  industry  produces  the  labor  organiza- 
tion, which,  with  growing  power,  submits  less  and 
less  willingly  to  arbitration  and  looks  more  and  more 
to  legislative  domination.  On  the  one  side,  the 
capitalist  who  talks  about  his  business ;  on  the  other 


48  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

the  laborer  who  talks  about  his  rights ;  on  the  one 
hand  the  capitalist  who  cannot  understand  industrial 
democracy ;  on  the  other,  labor  which  is  unprepared 
for  industrial  democracy.  Public  education  exists 
to  reconcile  such  conflicts.  Government  ownership 
and  the  labor  movement  are  a  challenge  to  our  school 
curricula.  The  day  is  past  when  we  can  argue  for 
or  against  them.  Labor  organization  with  all  its 
power  is  here;  government  ownership  with  its  de- 
mands upon  civic  enterprise  is  here;  and  it  is  the 
problem  of  the  schools  to  make  public  ownership 
efficient  and  labor  organization  safe  and  intelligent 
by  education.1 

For  handling  general  political  questions,  the  voter 
is  perhaps  somewhat  better  equipped.  Politics  has 
long  been  the  pi&ce  de  resistance  of  newspaper  articles 
and  male  conversation.  From  the  welter  of  partisan 
press  notices,  fragmentary  gossip  and  street  corner 
rumor,  something  like  the  truth  about  local  matters 
may  at  length  emerge  for  the  guidance  of  the  well- 
intentioned  citizen.  But  what  preliminary  knowl- 
edge or  ideals  does  the  grammar  school  graduate 
bring  to  his  initial  vote  ?  What  conception  has  he 
of  community  life  with  its  problems  and  mutual 
responsibilities  ?  What  vision  of  American  destiny  ? 
What  dream  of  "the  parliament  of  nations,  the 
federation  of  the  world"  ?  How  familiar  to  him  are 
the  larger  political  issues  upon  which  he  will  be  called 

1  These  labor  problems  become  even  more  acute  at  the  close  of 
the  war,  when  soldiers  must  be  reabsorbed  into  industry,  commerce,  and 
agriculture  at  the  very  time  when  war  production  ceases. 


THE  WORLD   TO-DAY  49 

to  ballot  ?  How  dear  to  his  heart  the  progressive 
laws  his  representatives  will  be  called  upon  to  pass  ? 
What  understanding  has  he  acquired  of  European 
nations,  of  our  common  racial  origin,  of  our  unity 
of  language,  our  partnership  in  history  and  culture, 
our  interdependence  in  commerce,  our  common 
problems,  and  the  essential  solidarity  of  our  interests 
and  theirs  ?  What  in  short  besides  teaching  him  to 
read  and  write  and  figure,  sketching  a  dry  outline 
of  our  own  history,  baring  the  fleshless  skeleton  of 
civics  to  his  uninterested  eye,  and  then  leaving  him 
to  the  mercy  of  the  press,  has  the  grammar  school 
done  better  to  equip  our  future  voter  for  his  politi- 
cal responsibilities  ? 

It  is  easy  to  explain  the  failure  of  education  to 
grapple  with  such  industrial  and  political  problems. 
The  public  schools  live  by  taxation ;  they  must  of- 
fend no  section  of  influential  opinion.  Education 
has  been  so  occupied  with  being  safe  that  it  has 
often  become  vapid.  To  teach  socially,  one  must 
have  a  social  theory.  But  a  social  theory  above 
all  things  has  been  forbidden  for  teachers  as  danger- 
ous, and  to  have  no  constructive  ideas  about  life 
has  been  if  not  the  ne  plus  ultra,  at  least  a  highly 
acceptable  point  in  pedagogic  qualification.  The 
urgency  of  the  present  crisis,  however,  forces  not 
only  on  individuals  but  on  whole  school  systems  the 
necessity  of  formulating  some  coherent  social  pro- 
gram ;  of  relating  the  course  of  study  to  this  program ; 
and  of  sending  pupils  forth  equipped  with  definite 
social  standards  and  ideals. 


50  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

It  may  be  hastily  conceived  by  some  readers  that 
I  intend  to  advocate  direct  and  formal  teaching  in 
the  grades  of  civics,  economics,  and  sociology.  This 
is  by  no  means  my  intention,  although,  in  the  light 
of  past  experience,  it  is  not  an  unthinkable  propo- 
sition. The  trend  of  subject  matter  has  been 
downward  in  the  educational  system.  The  high 
school  of  to-day  is  the  college  of  yesterday;  the 
grammar  school  of  to-day  is  the  academy  of  yester- 
day. Perhaps  the  grammar  school  may  some  day 
assume  the  high  school  problems  of  to-day.  It  is 
only  a  matter  of  time  till  economics  and  sociology 
will  have  as  stable  a  position  as  history  in  high  school 
curricula.  And  are  land,  labor,  and  capital,  division 
of  labor  and  specialization,  bargaining  and  the  de- 
termination of  wages  and  prices,  rent,  interest,  and 
the  rest  so  abstruse  and  complicated  that  the  twelve- 
and  thirteen-year-old  grade  school  child  could  not 
work  out  in  class  games,  class  discussions,  and  visits 
to  neighboring  factories  and  markets  some  concep- 
tion of  these  factors  upon  which  his  whole  future 
wage-earning  life  depends  ?  I  understand  that  an 
elementary  text  in  economics  for  grade  pupils  is 
already  on  the  market.1  Perhaps  such  formal  teach- 
ing, transformed  from  existing  college  courses  in 
both  method  and  matter,  may  some  day  be  an  answer 
to  our  problem. 

The  design  of  this  present  book,  however,  is  merely 
to  suggest  how  the  current  subject  matter  of  grade 
school  teaching  may  be  so  manipulated  as  to  give 

1  Frank  Leavitt,  Elementary  Social  Science,  The  Macmillan  Company. 


THE  WORLD   TO-DAY  51 

children  indirectly  and  in  a  manner  interesting  and 
within  their  comprehension,  some  knowledge  of  the 
origin  and  growth  of  social  institutions  and  the  nature 
of  current  industrial,  political,  and  social  organization. 

We  have  before  our  eyes  an  example  of  democracy 
failing  through  lack  of  such  educative  preparation. 
Poor  tortured  Russia,  exasperating  Russia,  deserting 
the  cause  of  liberty  at  the  very  moment  when  she 
might  have  won  eternal  victory.  "Look  at  Russia," 
says  the  political  reactionary.  "There  is  democ- 
racy! Is  that  the  sort  of  government  we  want?" 
But  Russia's  blundering  to-day  is  not  democracy. 
No !  It  is  the  aftermath  of  Tsardom.  Russia  sowed 
the  wind  and  she  reaped  the  whirlwind;  Russia 
sowed  autocracy  and  she  reaped  revolution ;  Russia 
sowed  tyranny  and  persecution  and  she  reaped  an- 
archy ;  Russia  sowed  ignorance  and  poverty  and  she 
reaped  the  Bolsheviki.  In  America  we  too  have 
seen  that  harvest;  we  have  sowed  poverty  and  in- 
dustrial ignorance  and  we  are  reaping  the  I.  W.  W. 
The  cure  for  that  disease  is  not  the  sheriff  but  the 
school-teacher.  It  is  education  that  in  the  end  makes 
the  world  safe  for  democracy  and  democracy  safe 
for  the  world. 

To  teach  the  child  the  history  of  human  civilization 
throughout  its  various  stages,  to  lead  him  to  under- 
stand the  forces  at  work  in  the  world  to-day,  and  to 
fit  him  for  his  share  in  the  common  life  —  this  is 
the  function  of  education.  It  will  be  the  work  of 
later  chapters  to  point  out  how  education  can  begin 
to  fulfill  this  function  in  the  grades. 


Ill 

READING    AND    WRITING 

SINCE  the  beginning  of  civilization,  the  three  R's 
have  formed  the  substance  of  education,  for  reading 
and  writing  are  the  tools  of  cumulative  knowledge 
and  communication ;  and  arithmetic,  the  medium  of 
economic  life.  By  numerical  calculation,  we  hold 
our  own  in  the  face  of  nature,  estimate  the  chances 
of  life  and  season,  and  conduct  the  business  of  manu- 
facture and  commerce  in  a  social  world.  Writing 
and  reading,  on  the  other  hand,  are  not  only  a  means 
but  a  mode  of  life  itself.  For  how  much  of  living 
comes  to  us  through  books  which  we  should  miss  in 
first-hand  contact  with  the  world.  By  the  turn  of 
a  page  we  are  whisked  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  and 
walk  at  ease  with  their  inhabitants  ;  encounter  types 
with  which  our  social  round  will  never  bring  us  face 
to  face ;  live  a  hundred  lives,  pass  through  a  hundred 
experiences  which  would  never  fall  to  our  own  hum- 
drum lot.  In  books,  there  lives  for  us  "the  sacred 
past  that  cannot  pass  away" ;  we  weep  with  Hecuba 
upon  the  walls  of  Troy;  dare  with  Csesar  at  the 
Rubicon ;  die  with  the  Spartans  at  Thermopylae. 
In  books,  all  lives  and  times  are  ours,  not  flittingly 
but  to  live  through  again  and  yet  again,  draining  the 

52 


READING  AND  WRITING  53 

bitter  and  the  sweet,  the  zest,  the  pang,  and  the 
significance.  Geographically,  historically,  socially, 
emotionally,  intellectually,  literature  offers  us  a 
vast  expansion  of  experience  beyond  the  limited 
existence  we  should  elsewise  live  in  time  and  space. 
An  insight  into  and  understanding  of  life  as  a  whole, 
an  impersonal  and  objective  view  of  experience,  a 
new  power  over  ideas  through  their  adequate  ex- 
pression, a  recreative  escape  from  the  limitations  of 
life,  satisfaction  of  our  hunger  for  permanence  in 
things,  and  a  brighter  vision  of  the  ideal, 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration  and  the  poet's  dream  "  — 

all  these  come  to  us  from  the  great  literature  of  the 
world  clearly  and  luminously  as  they  never  come 
through  the  broken  lights  and  darks  of  the  daily 
life  in  which  we  are  immersed. 

And  how  much  of  this  expansion  and  deepening 
of  personality  through  literature  do  we  give  the 
students  in  our  common  schools  ? 

The  last  decade  has,  indeed,  witnessed  a  renais- 
sance in  the  teaching  of  reading.  The  slow,  old- 
fashioned  oral  method,  once  necessary  when  both 
books  and  literate  persons  were  few  and  far  between, 
has  given  place,  in  part  at  least  and  in  the  upper 
grades,  to  silent  reading,  which  has  supplanted 
listening  or  reading  aloud  for  the  average  adult  in 
these  days  of  cheap  printing  and  compulsory  educa- 
tion. With  the  introduction  of  the  silent  method 
has  come  a  wider  range  and  greater  bulk  of  reading 


54  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

than  was  possible  under  the  old  system;  and  the 
attempt  to  familiarize  grade  school  pupils  with  the 
best  poetry  and  fiction  suitable  to  their  age  and 
comprehension  has  followed  as  a  natural  result  of 
the  shifting  of  emphasis  from  the  mechanics  of  oral 
reading  to  the  substance  and  enjoyment  of  the  mat- 
ter read.  Literature  readers  and  even  selected 
classics  have  replaced  the  time-worn  collection  of 
declamatory  pieces,  with  some  losses  to  be  sure,  but 
also  with  certain  gains.  Supplemental  reading, 
credit  for  books  read  at  home,  and  encouragement  of 
the  use  of  public  libraries,  all  are  designed  to  foster 
the  habit  and  the  love  of  reading.  And  scientific 
study  of  the  reading  process  has  produced  new 
methods  of  instruction  that  advance  the  child  more 
rapidly  to  a  mastery  of  the  printed  page  which 
assures  him  a  permanent  means  of  recreation  and 
self -education.  The  start  has  been  made  toward 
utilizing  reading  as  a  means  of  cultivation;  and 
the  lines  are  already  clearly  marked  for  further 
progress. 

The  effort  in  grade  and  high  school  English  teach- 
ing is  naturally  directed  in  the  main  toward  strength- 
ening the  student's  powers  of  literary  expression 
and  appreciation.  This  effort  has  been  more  success- 
ful in  its  first  than  in  its  second  aim.  My  students, 
with  all  their  glaring  faults  in  composition,  write 
and  talk  more  intelligently  than  they  read.  And 
their  mental  capacities  are  almost  always  far  ahead 
of  the  books  they  choose  for  independent  reading. 
What  lengthy  English  drill  the  high  school  graduate 


READING  AND  WRITING  55 

has  undergone  in  his  passage  through  the  schools, 
and  how  slight  its  traces  on  his  literary  taste !  In 
the  course  of  my  own  teaching,  I  have  asked  pupils 
from  the  public  high  school,  from  exclusive  private 
preparatory  schools,  and  from  private  and  public 
collegiate  institutions  to  prepare  for  me  several 
hundred  individual  lists  containing,  to  the  best  of 
their  memory  and  ability,  all  the  books  which  they 
had  ever  read.  These  lists  were  made  as  class  exper- 
iments, after  discussion  of  the  values  we  can  get  from 
literature  that  we  cannot  get  from  life.  The  work 
was  ungraded;  no  credit  was  given  for  long  lists ;  and 
every  effort  was  made  to  secure  unvarnished  state- 
ments, the  whole  purpose  being  to  discover  what 
sort  of  books  we  had  been  reading  and  whether  we 
had  selected  them  so  as  really  to  widen  our  expe- 
rience. The  lists  were  arranged  alphabetically  by 
authors  under  the  rough  classifications  of  fiction, 
biography,  poetry,  drama,  history,  science,  art, 
travel,  and  essays ;  and  from  these  lists,  a  composite 
was  prepared  indicating  how  many  persons  had  read 
each  book.  This  composite  was  then  exposed  for 
class  inspection,  discussion,  and  comparison  with  the 
single  lists,  and  was  found  to  consist  largely  of  novels 
by  second-rate  American  authors,  embodying  com- 
monplace ideas,  dealing  with  a  kind  of  life  with  which 
the  students  were  already  familiar,  and  offering 
little  or  no  expansion  of  experience.  For  many 
young  people,  coming  as  they  do  from  homes  where 
reading  forms  no  part  of  daily  life,  it  is  undoubtedly 
a  gain  to  read  at  all ;  yet  in  view  of  the  effort  that 


56  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

has  gone  into  instruction,  classroom  English  ought 
to  leave  a  deeper  mark. 

This  failure  of  teaching  to  affect  the  reading 
habits  of  the  pupils  in  our  common  schools  has  a 
social  significance  not  instantly  apparent  to  the 
practical  observer. 

Can  we  wonder  that  the  student  who  has  thus 
lived  imprisoned  in  the  narrow  bounds  of  his  own 
personal  experience  exhibits  a  lack  of  mental  affabil- 
ity and  imagination,  not  the  flimsy  make-believe  of 
fancy,  but  penetrative  imagination,  as  Ruskin  names 
it,  the  faculty  of  entering  into  and  understanding 
situations  other  than  our  own  ?  Yet  this  gift  of 
imagination  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  existence  in  a 
complex  social  world.  The  failure  of  the  Russian 
offensive  which  might  have  forced  an  early  peace 
and  insured  the  safety  of  democracy,  sprang  at 
bottom  from  imaginative  incapacity.  The  interna- 
tional alliance,  the  meaning  of  the  war  and  its  relation 
to  his  individual  lot,  the  whole  grand  spectacle  of 
world-freedom  fighting  with  a  deadly  foe,  had  no 
existence  for  the  timid  peasant,  product  of  unen- 
lightened and  oppressive  ages.  The  War  itself  — 
what  was  it  but  the  offspring  of  an  unimaginative 
world  bounded  by  national  aims,  habits,  and  ideals  ? 
Political  corruption  and  the  indifference  of  voters 
and  legislators  to  the  great  social  issues  of  city, 
state,  and  national  government  are  indices  of  our  own 
imaginative  lack.  The  food  bill  upon  which  in 
part  depended  the  outcome  of  a  war  for  which  we 
spent  our  men  and  millions,  in  time  of  crisis  and 


READING  AND  WRITING  57 

harvest,  dragged  week  after  week,  month  after 
month,  through  the  two  houses  of  an  unimaginative 
Congress.  The  prolonged  selfishness  of  capital  and 
labor,  the  first  resistance  to  food  regulation,  the 
apathy  of  so  many  women  in  the  face  of  the  call 
to  national  service,  the  strange  incompetency  of 
leaders  on  the  shipping  board  who  stood  at  dead 
lock  while  the  U-boats  took  their  weekly  toll,  —  these 
too  are  but  the  outcome  of  untouched  imagination. 

Therefore,  to  make  instruction  tell  in  cultivating 
a  literary  taste  which  will  expand  individual  per- 
sonality to  the  breadth  of  civic  and  international 
life,  is  the  great  social  duty  of  our  English  teachers. 

This  can  be  done  only  by  vitalizing  our  English 
work ;  by  scrapping  the  idea  that  there  are  classics 
every  child  should  know1;  by  selecting  first-rate, 
fascinating,  largely  fictional  material  from  all  the 
world's  great  literatures  and  setting  the  children  to 
reading  not  selections  but  whole  books,  just  for  fun, 
as  fast  as  they  can,  over  and  over  again  as  long  as 
the  interest  lasts,  in  attractive  —  if  cheap  —  library 
editions,  and  somewhat  as  they  will.  And  this 
vitalizing  must  begin  in  the  grade  school  curriculum. 
For  strange  as  it  may  seem,  just  when  the  child 

1  "There  should  be  a  warning  against  the  use  of  the  word  'child'  in 
the  titles  of  books  intended  for  children.  Every  child  apes  the  adult, 
earnestly  wishes  to  be  older,  and  deems  his  childhood  a  stigma.  One 
of  my  youngsters  was  presented  by  a  maiden  lady  with  a  splendid  volume 
of  verse,  but  it  was  entitled  Poems  Every  Child  Should  Know.  His  re- 
mark to  me  upon  the  occasion  was,  'Gee,  I  wish  I  could  find  a  book 
called  Songs  Every  Old  Maid  Should  Sing.  I'd  fire  it  back  at  her.  " 

A.  L.  W. 


58  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

needs  the  most  fluid,  most  personal,  most  vital 
methods,  then  it  is  that  we  have  most  formalized  our 
English  teaching.  To  the  grade  school  pupil,  we 
offer  spelling,  reading  mechanics,  and  formal  Eng- 
lish grammar,  necessary  but  purely  technical  matters 
of  attainment,  the  tools  and  not  the  substance  of 
reading  and  writing.  Spelling  no  school  system 
has  yet  claimed  to  teach  successfully  to  those  pupils 
for  whom  it  long  remains  a  necessary  special  study. 
The  average  high  school  freshman  brings  from  his 
seven-year  contact  with  the  elements  of  English 
grammar  an  inability  to  write  an  English  sentence, 
plus  the  notion  that  grammar  is  a  set  of  rules  for 
recitation  use  alone.  And  very  many  college  fresh- 
men fail  to  get  the  substance  from  a  printed  page. 
Have  we  taught  wrong  or  taught  the  wrong  things 
in  the  lower  grades  ?  The  answer  may  hold  much  of 
both  hypotheses. 

Spelling  is  a  top  for  every  man  to  spin  in  this 
reformatory  age ;  yet  I  hesitate  to  offer  my  solution 
of  the  mystery  because  it  is  too  much  a  cutting  of 
the  Gordian  knot  to  recommend  itself  to  makers  of 
curricula.  Of  course,  the  old-fashioned  oral  spelling 
has  gone  out  of  date;  we  have  discovered  that  we 
never  spell  aloud  in  life,  that  the  champion  of  the 
oral  spelling  match  cannot  always  set  words  down 
correctly  on  a  sheet  of  paper ;  and  that  to  translate 
oral  spelling  into  writing  is  a  slow  process  for  the 
penman  or  stenographer.  We  do  teach  written 
spelling  in  these  later  days;  yet  what  a  grinding 
business  it  often  is,  and  what  time  it  takes  which 


READING  AND  WRITING  59 

might  be  given  to  reading  or  to  written  work !  And 
even  if  the  set  spelling  lesson  be  retained  (as  indeed  it 
must  until  we  find  a  better  substitute,  since  poor  spell- 
ing is  so  effectual  a  handicap  in  business  life),  we  must 
admit  that  many  pupils  learn  to  spell  the  common 
words  and  learn  how  to  acquire  those  they  do  not 
know  long  before  the  eighth  grade  is  reached  and 
the  spelling  drill  is  discontinued,  just  as  most  chil- 
dren learn  the  mechanics  of  reading  long  before  the 
tardy  few  for  whom  the  reading  class  is  held  grade 
after  grade  —  the  quick  readers  growing  more  and 
more  impatient  and  uninterested ;  the  slow  readers 
embarrassed  by  the  competition  of  their  more  rapid 
neighbors. 

But  if  formal  spelling  is  discontinued,  what  can 
we  offer  in  its  place  that  will  produce  better  spelling 
results  in  the  end  and  be  at  the  time  of  more  educa- 
tional value  to  the  pupil  ?  Let  us  look  for  the 
answer  to  the  causes  of  poor  spelling !  Your  thor- 
oughly poor  speller  is  not  so  much  a  poor  speller  as 
a  poor  observer.  He  is  probably  a  poor  reader ;  he 
probably  does  not  catch  the  colors,  sights,  and 
sounds  recorded  on  the  page  before  his  eyes  ;  he  prob- 
ably misses  the  point  of  the  problem  in  arithmetic 
until  you  have  asked  him  to  read  it  over,  looking 
for  what  he  knows  and  what  he  has  to  prove;  he 
probably  does  not  note  the  details  of  tree  and  bird 
and  flower  on  his  daily  walk.  His  is  a  lack  of  con- 
centrated, minute  attention  and  visual  observation, 
and  all  the  rote  teaching  of  spelling  in  the  world, 
especially  the  spelling  of  word  lists  in  which  he  has 


60  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE   R'S 

no  interest,  will  not  make  him  spell  until  this  con- 
stitutional defect  is  removed.  Authoritative  studies 
of  the  spelling  process  1  bear  out  the  contention  that 
the  problem  is  one  of  observation  and  fixation,  and 
rightly  place  the  emphasis  on  teaching  the  child 
how  to  study  his  spelling  lesson  instead  of  on  testing 
him  upon  it ;  but  they  do  not  always  recognize  the 
wider  bearings  of  this  fundamental  fact  or  propose 
solutions  which  bring  into  play  the  related  powers 
that  go  to  make  up  not  only  the  good  speller  but 
the  accurate  recorder  of  all  the  varied  phenomena 
of  life.  It  remains  for  us  to  discover  such  a 
solution,  which  will  both  develop  the  powers  of 
verbal  observation  and  furnish  an  incentive  for 
their  use. 

In  the  first  place,  there  ought  to  be  a  course  in 
observation  of  all  sorts,  including  visual,  in  every 
grammar  grade.  The  person  who  will  write  a  prac- 
tical manual  of  the  subject  will  confer  a  priceless 
boon  on  elementary  teachers.2  But  nature  study; 
drawing ;  map  making ;  scout  work ;  flash  glimpses  of 
pictures,  sentences,  words,  lists  of  figures,  and  single 

1  No  grade  or  high  school  teacher  can  afford  not  to  read  The  Teaching 
of  Spelling  by  Henry  Suzzallo,  which  remains,  among  many  good  books, 
the  best  practical  manual  of  this  difficult  art.  See  also  The  Child  and. 
His  Spelling  by  Cook  and  O'Shea.  These  books  will  give  the  spelling 
teacher  a  method  which  produces  a  retentive  mastery  of  words  taught 
and  power  to  acquire  independently  new  words  as  need  arises. 

1  The  child  needs  training  not  only  in  visual  observation  but  in  the 
use  of  all  his  senses.  Every  grade  school  teacher  should  read  Madame 
Montessori  on  this  subject  and  familiarize  himself  further  with  the  Boy 
Scout  manual  and  the  manuals  used  in  the  army  for  the  training  of 
scouts,  aviators,  etc. 


READING  AND  WRITING  6i 

numbers  ;  the  old  game  of  listing  at  a  glance  a  group 
of  miscellaneous  small  objects  or  of  describing  after 
a  rapid  survey  a  person's  dress  even  down  to  the 
number  of  buttons  on  his  coat  cuff ;  observing  and 
describing  the  details  of  an  experiment,  watching 
and  reproducing  a  gymnastic  drill,  a  hundred  such 
ways  will  suggest  themselves  to  the  resourceful 
instructor  in  which  powers  of  at  least  visual  ob- 
servation can  be  daily  trained  through  exercises 
and  games  vividly  interesting  to  the  children  and 
forming  a  restful  variation  from  individual  book 
work.  Of  this  sort  of  drill,  spelling  games  that 
teach  the  child  to  see  a  word  at  a  flash  with  all  its 
letters  will  form  a  natural  and  entertaining  part; 
and  will  introduce  the  matter  of  spelling  in  the  pre- 
cise connection  which  gives  the  poor  speller  his 
fundamental  difficulty. 

But  how  shall  we  lead  the  student  to  apply  these 
powers  of  observation  to  his  spelling  ?  How  give 
him  a  vital  interest  in  the  acquisition  of  new  words  ? 
It  must  be  remembered  that  a  good  speller  is  not  a 
person  who  can  spell  lists  of  words  from  a  spelling 
book,  but  a  person  who  can  write  correctly  what  he 
wants  to  say  and  acquire  quickly  new  words  he 
comes  upon  in  reading  or  conversation  and  subse- 
quently needs  to  use.  The  only  logical  incentive 
to  correct  spelling  is  the  desire  to  write.  The  most 
natural  spelling  source  is  the  books,  magazines,  or 
newspapers  the  child  reads.  Teach  an  observant 
child  to  like  to  read  and  write  and  the  spelling  will 
come  of  itself.  No  formal  spelling  then  in  our  ideal 


62  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

school  except  as  anticipatory  preparation  for  com- 
position in  which  new  words  are  likely  to  appear,1 
or  as  corrective  teaching  of  words  used  in  composi- 
tion without  properly  looking  them  up  and  hence 
misspelled.  But  plenty  of  using  words  in  writing 
(and  for  enlarging  the  vocabulary  especially  in  writ- 
ing based  on  pleasure  reading),  and  plenty  of  point- 
ing out  new  words  in  books  and  looking  up  new 
words  in  the  dictionary  before  the  pupils  get  them 
wrong.  Thus  to  acquire  incidentally  in  its  natural 
relation  to  reading  and  writing,  the  ability  to  notice, 
fix  in  the  mind  and  master,  or  to  find  in  the  dictionary 
a  new  desired  word,  is  the  open  sesame  to  successful 
spelling.  All  the  scientific  devices  evolved  in  the 
skillful  teaching  of  formal  spelling  can  be  employed 
with  equal  success  in  an  indirect  attack  upon  the 
subject. 

This  new  method  will  no  doubt  be  harder  for  the 
teacher;  she  will  be  always  teaching  spelling;  she 
cannot  devote  one  half  hour  to  the  business  each 
day  and  call  her  duty  done.  But  the  spelling  will 
be  a  real  and  vital  tool ;  the  child  will  have  a  practical 
interest  in  learning  to  spell  a  word  correctly  since  he 
is  learning  it  in  order  to  use  it  immediately  in  his 
written  work ;  he  will  spell  more  easily,  read  more, 
write  better ;  and  the  curriculum  will  be  opened  up 
at  a  new  point  to  the  social  possibilities  of  English 

1  Note  here  how  easily  the  teacher  can  discover  the  new  words  the 
child  is  likely  to  employ  in  a  given  composition  by  talking  the  subject 
over  before  the  children  write.  That  is  the  time  for  learning  to  spell 
the  words,  thus  preventing  the  initial  errors  which  are  so  hard  to  cure. 


READING  AND   WRITING  63 

teaching  in  the  grades.1  This  idea  is  no  longer  a 
mere  theory.  Madame  Montessori's  pupils  write 
without  spelling  drill  —  just  as  babies  learn  to  talk, 
naturally.  They  simply  write  words,  whole,  or- 
ganic, undissected  words  which  they  have  come  to 
know  and  need.  Spelling  is  analysis,  philology, 
the  last  and  not  the  first  step  in  English  study, 
the  field  for  scholars,  experts,  graybeards,  and  not 
children ! 

Needless  to  say,  reformed  spelling  will  greatly 
facilitate  learning  how  to  write  by  linking  oral  and 
written  unit  in  an  obvious  way ;  and  will  make  rapid 
reading  much  easier  for  beginners  by  reducing 
the  number  of  symbols  they  must  memorize.  And 
reformed  spelling  is  not  only  simpler  but  closer  to 
the  genius  of  our  language.  Let  him  who  laments  its 
fancied  loss  of  etymology  compare  a  revised  word 
list  with  some  Chaucerian  or  Spenserian  text  —  to 
go  no  further  back  —  and  note  the  similarity,  often 
in  those  very  items  which  he  most  decries  in  the 
"new  spelling."  Such  opponents  convict  them- 
selves of  ignorance.  Etymology  rests  in  any  case 
on  speech  sounds,  not  on  letters,  and  philology 
deals  but  little  with  the  written  alphabet.  There 
is  nothing  subtle,  mystic,  or  sacred  about  spelling; 
it  is  merely  a  sound  notation  at  the  start,  modifying 
itself  somewhat  more  slowly  than  speech  sounds 
alter  in  the  growth  of  dialects.  All  of  the  written 

1  See  Freeman  :  Psychology  of  the  Common  Branches,  Chapter  VI,  for 
arguments  against  the  incidental  method  of  teaching  spelling  and  for 
suggestions  as  to  a  combination  of  drill  and  incidental  instruction. 


64  SOCIALIZING  THE   THREE  R'S 

western  languages  are  phonetic  —  English  very 
clumsily  so,  to  be  sure,  a  fact  which  disguises  the 
essentially  phonetic  nature  of  our  chaotic  spelling. 
With  some  forty-two  speech  sounds  in  our  language, 
we  have  hundreds  of  ways  of  writing  them,  not  by 
any  means  always  indicative  of  verbal  origins. 
There  are  anywhere  from  four  to  six  ways  of  spelling 
each  of  our  eighteen  vowel  sounds  and  several  of 
the  consonants  in  the  alphabet  are  duplicates.  This 
is  just  as  phonetic  as  the  revised  spelling  only 
stupider.  Old  English  was  more  simple.  It  is  only 
the  mistaken  thought  of  language  as  written  first 
and  spoken  afterwards  that  leads  us  to  attach  such 
value  to  the  printed  forms  we  know.  Living  lan- 
guage, however,  is  spoken  language,  phonetic  lan- 
guage. Spelling  often  obscures  etymology  by  its 
variations  and  substitutions  while  a  phonetic  alpha- 
bet would  give  us  language  history  in  letters  any 
child  could  read.  Strip  language  of  the  mummy 
togs  of  dead  speech  habits.  Reform  spelling  if  only 
for  the  sake  of  future  etymologists.  My  own  repug- 
nance for  the  new  mode  is  merely  sentimental,  I  am 
sure ;  and  when  a  generation  has  been  reared  who 
know  no  other  spelling,  "Teers,  idul  teers,"  will 
read  as  sweetly  to  the  eye  as  the  orthoepy  to  which 
we  are  accustomed. 

But  this  is  all  beside  our  present  mark.  Our 
query  is  whether  formal  instruction  in  the  mechanics 
of  an  unsettled  spelling  is  the  most  stimulating  lan- 
guage work  which  we  can  give  the  future  citizens 
of  our  complex  social  world.  Formal  spelling  I 


READING  AND  WRITING  65 

omit  then  from  discussion,  calling  experience,  philol- 
ogy, and  Madame  Montessori  to  my  aid.1 

Grammar  offers  more  difficulties  to  such  summary 
disposal ;  but  disposed  of  in  its  present  form,  it  must 
and  soon  will  be.  Formal  grammar  is  the  science 
of  language,  an  abstraction  dealing,  like  algebra,  with 
generalizations  and  formulae.  This  is  not  the  stuff 
for  childish  study  or  comprehension.  Childhood  is 
the  time  for  the  specific.  To  use  language,  not  to 
talk  about  it,  is  the  child's  own  natural  way.  The 
study  of  grammar  in  the  grades  had  its  rise  in  the 
effort  to  purify  the  speech  of  an  illiterate  public,  and 
the  study  has  not  been  without  effect.  But  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  rules  have  seldom  taught  a  child  to 
talk  correctly.  Example  and  correction  may  have 
helped,  and  as  I  should  teach  spelling  by  reading 
and  writing,  so  should  I  teach  grammar  by  speaking, 
writing,  and  reading,  using  rules  seldom  and  only  to 
correct  mistakes,  never  for  themselves  alone.2  Thus 
grammar  would  become  what  vital  grammar  is,  a 

1  Extensive  experience  with  poor  spellers  in  high  school  and  college 
classes  confirms  my  opinion  that  the  remedy  is  not  more  spelling  drill 
of  the  old  type,  but  a  radical  change  in  the  orientation  of  grade  school 
spelling  work.  I  should  like  further  to  state  that  much  wholesale  criti- 
cism of  the  failure  of  our  schools  to  teach  spelling  "as  well  as  in  the  old 
days"  seems  to  me  entirely  unjustified.  Pupils  spell  better  to-day  than 
ever  before.  The  critics  forget  that  to-day  we  have  universal  education ; 
and  furthermore  that  increasing  numbers  of  persons  now  rise  to  business 
and  clerical  positions  where  their  spelling  habits  become  conspicuous. 

*  See  Chubb's  Teaching  of  English,  p.  225,  for  an  outline  of  a  grade 
school  language  course  in  which  language  work,  grammar,  and  composi- 
tion are  combined.  The  plan  is  somewhat  formal,  but  it  may  prove 
suggestive. 

F 


66  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

means  to  clear  expression,  a  part  of  language  and 
not  a  set  of  rules  to  be  applied  externally  to  speech. 
Almost  any  high  school  freshman  will  tell  you  with 
fearful  glibness  that  "a  sentence  is  the  expression  of 
thought  in  words."  The  same  freshman  has  no 
notion  of  what  a  thought  may  be.  And  the  same 
freshman  will  speak  and  write  in  scraps  of  phrases 
showing  the  incompleteness  of  his  mental  processes. 
If  to  know  the  thing  before  the  rule  be  good  pedagogy, 
attention  to  his  thinking,  writing,  and  speaking  is 
what  this  freshman  needs.  The  child  who  hears 
good  English  in  his  home  requires  no  grammar  drill 
to  speak  the  language  well.  And  formal  grammar 
has  failed  to  correct  the  bad  speech  habits  of  the 
child  who  hears  poor  English  when  outside  of  school. 
The  inference  is  clear ;  and  more  talking,  writing,  and 
reading,  and  less  grammar  let  it  be. 

The  difficulty  of  teaching  formal  grammar  in  the 
grades  is  greatly  increased  by  the  lack  of  good  text- 
books for  instruction.  It  is  almost  safe  to  say  that 
there  are  no  reliable,  scholarly,  teachable  English 
grammars.  Many  texts  indeed  there  are  embodying 
the  preferences  of  their  authors.  Many  texts  are 
mere  compilations  from  other  older  texts  based  in 
turn  on  textbooks  older  still,  and  often  unreliable 
even  as  sources  of  antiquarian  information.  Many 
texts  might  better  be  described  as  Latin  gram- 
mars of  the  English  language,  so  completely  has  the 
structure  of  our  mother  tongue  been  warped  therein 
to  fit  the  classic  bias  of  the  old  school  grammarian. 
And  there  are  many  texts  by  authors  crassly  ignorant 


READING  AND  WRITING  67 

of  the  history  of  our  language  and  its  several  sources, 
who  interpret  idioms  in  the  light  of  their  own  in- 
genious logic  instead  of  consulting  language  history 
for  origins  and  descents.  The  average  formal 
English  grammar  treats  of  an  embalmed  tongue, 
smelling  of  grave  clothes  and  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  forms  no  chart  for  the  distracted  child  wandering 
in  the  mazes  of  present-day  illiterate  speech.1  The 
average  grammar  still  strives  to  force  a  non-con- 
temporary and  non-historical  use  of  shall  for  the 
first  person  simple  future,  in  the  teeth  of  all  the  fine 
old  English  lines  where  sceolan  bears  its  weight  of 
doom  and  tragedy  and  willan  indicates  the  simple 
time  to  come.  Dead  issues  like  the  split  infinitive 
still  raise  their  heads  on  every  page.  Yet  grammar  is 
not  an  ethics  but  a  history ;  not  a  commandment  but 
a  record;  not  a  logical  science  but  the  jottings  of 
the  chance  and  wayward  habits  of  unlettered  men. 
For  strange  to  say,  language  grows  from  beneath 
and  not  above.  Speech  is  flexible  and  fluid  at  the 
lowest,  not  the  highest  levels.  Educated  people 
speak  a  printed  language,  and  to  print  is  to  petrify. 
It  will  be  curious  to  see  whether  printing  and  uni- 
versal education  will  so  far  standardize  speech  as  to 
arrest  the  course  of  language  change  and  growth. 
Such,  at  any  rate,  would  be  the  logical  and  sorry 
outcome  of  a  teaching  policy  which  gave  to  grammar 

1  This  criticism  does  not  apply  to  some  of  the  so-called  language 
books  now  in  use  in  elementary  education,  but  all  too  many  of  these 
show  a  lack  of  English  scholarship  which  mars  their  excellent  pedagogic 
method. 


68  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

rules  the  awful  import  of  Mosaic  law.  Yet  such  a 
teaching  policy  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  present 
placement  of  grammar  in  the  grades.  For  at  the 
point  where  teaching  scholarship  is  lowest,  and 
fetishism  accordingly  high,  just  there  we  essay  the 
most  abstruse  and  least  developed  of  all  sciences. 
The  average  teacher  jeers  at  Johnny  when  he  con- 
fuses drank  and  drunk  or  swam  and  swum,  quite 
ignorant  of  the  fact  that  most  of  his  mistakes  are 
not  the  product  of  his  own  carelessness  but  the 
lineal  survivals  in  low-class  speech  of  the  original 
Anglo-Saxon  correct  verb  forms  and  that  "they  drunk 
up  all  the  water" — yes,  even  the  up — is  right  good 
old  English,  and  drank  in  the  plural  past  historically 
a  hideous  mistake.  The  average  grade  school 
teacher  knows  nothing  of  Old  or  Middle  or  Shake- 
spearian English ;  nothing  of  the  queer  ways  of  lan- 
guage growth  and  dialect  amalgamation  ;  nothing  of 
sound  changes  and  phonetic  laws.  She  knows  noth- 
ing scientifically  of  Greek  and  Latin  grammar, 
without  which  many  common  English  constructions 
and  idioms  are  blind  puzzles.  Yet  with  this  meager 
equipment  and  with  inadequate  or  illiterate  texts, 
we  ask  her  to  teach  the  child  the  science  of  his 
mother  tongue  —  a  science  at  once  beyond  the 
teacher  and  unsuited  to  his  age. 

Then  must  it  be  "no  more  of  formal  grammar  in 
the  common  schools."  We  teach  a  foreign  language 
by  the  natural  method.  How  long  before  we  shall 
adopt  it  with  our  own  ?  Again  I  say,  speak,  read, 
write,  correct,  and  illustrate  by  grammatical  expla- 


READING  AND  WRITING  69 

nations  if  you  must.  Let  grammar  be  the  by-product, 
the  tool,  the  handmaid  of  speech  and  composition ; 
but  away  with  set  conjugations,  parsings,  and  declen- 
sions in  the  lower  schools.  My  own  experience 
suggests  that  high  school  is  soon  enough  to  broach 
these  mysteries ;  that  in  high  school  they  must  be 
taught  again  even  when  they  have  been  covered  in 
the  elementary  course ;  and  that  even  among  high 
school  teachers  with  their  more  liberal  training,  there 
are  few  now  fitted  either  in  knowledge  or  in  point 
of  view,  to  make  such  study  vital,  reliable,  and  sig- 
nificant. 

But  let  us  not  be  destructive  only  in  our  review 
of  grade  school  subjects.  What  can  we  do  with 
reading  and  writing  to  make  of  them  a  socializing 
force  ? 

First  conies  the  eternal  problem  of  what  we  shall 
have  our  pupils  read.  Let  them  read  to  read,  not 
to  learn  how.  Let  the  reading  lesson  be  always  an 
end  from  the  very  start  and  not  a  means.  Read 
aloud  with  them  if  they  cannot  understand  alone ; 
and  do  not  underestimate  the  capacity  of  little 
folks  to  like  and  understand  the  best.  It  has  long 
been  my  theory,  founded  on  my  own  experience, 
that  the  way  to  learn  a  foreign  language  is  to  lay 
hold  of  a  good  hard  average  book  :  a  fat  two-volume 
German  novel,  an  up-to-date  French  romance,  a 
play  by  D'Annunzio.  The  struggle  is  sharp  and 
brief.  Mastery  comes.  Vocabulary  comes.  The 
genius  of  the  language  grows  familiar.  The  appetite 
is  uncloyed  by  the  mild  pap  of  primers  and  easy 


70  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

readers  on  which  the  usual  beginning  class  marks  time. 
Then  why  not  let  the  littlest  children  have  whole 
books  from  the  start  in  English  too ;  books  adapted 
to  their  age  and  likes,  but  none  the  less  fine,  sound, 
meaty  tales ;  real  books,  not  primers ;  Mother  Goose 
instead  of  A,  B,  C ;  Robinson  Crusoe  and  The  Ara- 
bian Nights,  Hiawatha  and  The  Wonder  Book  instead 
of  "words  of  one  syllable"?  Having  discovered  the 
value  of  a  long  period  of  development  in  evolving 
a  higher  type,  we  bid  fair  to  prolong  human  infancy 
till  a  man  just  gets  life  well  between  his  teeth  as 
they  drop  from  his  gums.  We  protect  the  child 
from  early  work  (too  often  even  at  home),1  from  all 
responsible  contact  with  the  world  which  would 
mature  his  will  and  stimulate  him  to  creative  thought. 
His  schooling  is  his  major  chance  to  grow  in  judg- 
ment and  experience ;  yet  we  train  his  school  activi- 
ties upon  a  trellis  of  prescribed  routine,  anticipate, 
think,  act  for  him  at  every  turn  and  cut  off  his  hope 
of  all  vicarious  life  by  keeping  him  through  the 
grades  on  merely  juvenile  or  informatory  reading. 

1 "  Today  child  idleness  is  ten  times  as  serious  a  problem  as  child  la- 
bor. Our  labor  legislation  has  been  too  negative  and  not  sufficiently 
constructive.  We  have  a  serious  situation  in  this.  Until  recently,  most 
of  us  were  brought  up  under  rural  conditions  and  the  farm  furnished  a 
discipline  of  life.  We  did  things  systematically  and  without  protest  in 
rain  or  shine.  A  farmer  boy  never  forgets  to  milk  the  cows  and  he 
never  says  '  It  is  rainy  and  disagreeable '  and  then  stays  in  the  house 
when  he  ought  to  feed  the  stock.  This  discipline  of  life  begins  very 
early.  Now  most  of  us  are  being  brought  up  under  urban  conditions 
and  lose  that  discipline  of  life  which  is  essential  to  the  formation  of 
character.  This  is  one  reason  for  universal  military  service." 

—  RICHARD  T.  ELT. 


READING  AND  WRITING  71 

Children  come  to  the  high  school  green,  tender, 
flabby,  unused  to  sustained  attention  and  continu- 
ous work,  unused  to  ideas,  incapable  of  reading  any- 
thing except  short  stories  or  endlessly  repetitive 
Dotty  Dimples,  Little  Colonels,  or  Frank  Meriweihers. 
Memories  still  linger  in  my  mind  of  Herculean 
struggles  by  bright  and  interested  high  school  fresh- 
men to  extract  the  simple  plot  from  Ivanhoe,  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,  or  The  Tale  of  Two  Cities, 
struggles  which  showed  an  unwarrantable  pauperi- 
zation of  the  children  in  the  grades.  For  seven 
years,  they  had  been  robbed  of  their  literary  birth- 
right —  the  power  to  follow  and  appreciate  a  stir- 
ring tale  stretching  in  time  and  place  beyond  the 
range  of  day-to-day  experience.  Books  poorly 
chosen  ;  time  spent  on  meager  oral  reading ;  or  lack 
of  training  in  understanding  reading  was  the  thief. 
I  have  appended  at  the  end  of  this  volume  a  list 
of  good  books  for  children's  reading,  tried  and  tested 
in  many  homes  and  schools.  Not  every  book  in 
this  list  is  adapted  to  every  child  at  the  indicated 
grade.  And  it  is  as  much  a  mistake  to  go  over  as 
under  pupils'  heads.  But  why  make  a  class  list 
uniform  and  rigid  ?  Let  every  pupil  read  a  different 
thing,  unless  you  find  a  book  that  all  will  love  and 
read  and  talk  about  and  act  out  in  play  together. 
Do  not  object  that  unless  the  reading  is  uniform, 
you  cannot  conveniently  examine  the  class  upon  its 
work.  Courses  should  not  be  adapted  to  examina- 
tions but  examinations  to  courses.  Students  study 
not  even  to  learn  but  to  grow,  to  grow  in  love  for 


72  SOCIALIZING  THE   THREE  R'S 

and  power  over  things  worth  while,  ennobling,  and 
beautiful. 

In  an  early  page  of  this  chapter  I  said  that  children 
should  read  whole  books  in  cheap  but  attractive 
library  editions.  A  chapter  might  well  be  written 
on  the  printing  and  binding  of  school  classics.  How 
depressing  are  their  cheap,  dingy,  and  substantial 
covers ;  their  unmistakable  textbook  print  and  pa- 
per; their  numeric  annotations  and  compendious 
notes !  Should  not  a  book  be  lovable  for  itself,  a  thing 
to  keep  and  put  upon  a  shelf  and  like  to  see  ?  The 
Everyman,  the  Burt,  and  the  Crowell  editions, 
despite  faults  of  text  and  structure,  still  have 
worked  a  miracle  in  college  English  because  they 
wear  a  reading,  not  a  grinding,  look.  I  have 
always  used  library  editions  for  my  high  school 
classes  when  they  could  be  found  in  well-printed 
cheap  editions,  even  when  they  had  no  notes.  Pupils 
will  like  them  better ;  keep  them  longer ;  read  them 
oftener.  When  some  publisher  does  for  grade 
school  work  what  the  Buttons  have  done  for  the 
field  of  college  literature,  a  great  advance  will  be 
possible  in  selecting  likeable  reading  for  the  little 
folks  as  well. 

The  actual  teaching  of  a  piece  of  literature  in  the 
grade  school  classroom  could  form  the  subject  of  a 
book  much  more  extended  than  the  present  collec- 
tion of  suggestive  hints.  How  shall  we  present  the 
given  material  so  as  to  arouse  interest  and  achieve 
understanding  without  killing  it  ?  Here  is  the  point 
where  love  and  science  meet.  The  laboratory  method 


READING  AND   WRITING  73 

of  teaching  literature,  so  late  and  so  valuable  a  peda- 
gogic find,  has  the  defect  of  becoming  lifeless  dissec- 
tion in  the  hands  of  an  uninspired  master.  In 
order  to  avoid  this  pitfall,  many  instructors  teach 
impressionistically,  in  exclamation  points,  reducing 
the  recitation  to  a  sort  of  collective  quivering  with 
enthusiasm.  But  the  piece  of  reading  must  be 
understood  before  any  valuable  appreciation  can 
be  aroused,  any  appreciation  that  is  more  than  a 
sentimental  echo  of  the  feelings  of  an  idolized  pre- 
ceptor. Other  instructors  go  through  a  thing  sen- 
tence by  sentence,  word  by  word,  making  sure  that 
no  detail  escapes  the  student's  observation,  with 
the  result  of  boredom  and  a  lack  of  stimulus  to 
further  reading.  What  exactly  shall  we  do  in  class 
and  what  expect  pupils  to  do  for  themselves  outside  ? 
To  find  sufficiently  meaty  stuff  for  study  and  reci- 
tation is  the  problem  of  the  elementary  English 
teacher.  Arithmetic  is  easy;  there  is  the  sum  to 
work.  Geography  is  easy;  there  are  the  facts  to 
memorize.  In  the  teaching  of  high  school  and 
college  English,  this  effort  to  find  substantial  sub- 
ject matter  has  resulted  more  and  more  in  stress  upon 
the  history  and  background  of  literature  at  the  ex- 
pense of  real  reading  and  literary  appreciation. 
But  literary  history,  even  literary  biography;  essen- 
tial as  both  are  to  English  scholarship,  are  not  a 
substitute  for  learning  how  to  read  intelligently  and 
with  appetite.  And  literary  history  has  no  function 
in  the  grammar  school.  What  then  shall  our  grade 
school  English  classes  do? 


74  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

First,  read  in  long  enough  stretches  to  arouse 
interest.  Do  not  discuss  until  a  bulk  of  reading  has 
been  done,  and  then  ask  well-planned  suggestive 
questions  that  will  review  the  reading  in  extenso  and 
detail.  If  you  do  not  know  how  to  ask  questions 
about  literature,  The  Teaching  of  Poetry  in  the  High 
School  by  Professor  Fairchild  of  the  University  of 
Missouri  will  give  you  a  helpful  start.  Remember 
that  you  are  training  the  pupil  to  observe  and  under- 
stand ;  make  him  do  both,  and  make  him  look  ahead. 
Never  trust  to  the  inspiration  of  the  moment  for 
your  questions.  Have  them  ready.  You  can  have 
the  inspirations  extra!  And  know  just  how  many 
things  you  can  cover  in  your  class  period,  stick 
to  essentials  and  get  done.  Plan  so  you  will  have 
time  to  give  the  pupils  rein  to  ask  questions  and 
follow  up  their  own  lines  of  thought.  But  be  sure 
to  plan  something  of  your  own  —  and  finish  it  on 
time. 

Suppose  a  class  in  the  upper  grades  is  just  begin- 
ning Evangeline.  Give  them  a  bit  of  historical 
background.  Read  them  the  whole  poem.  Then 
ask  them  to  tell  the  story.  Next  let  them  read  the 
first  part  to  themselves,  and  try  to  tell  the  main 
points  alone.  Then  come  your  questions,  so  well 
woven  into  re-reading  and  class  discussion  that  the 
child  does  not  suspect  a  prepared  lesson  plan  at  all. 

1.  What   is   the   sad   thought   which   occurs   to 
Longfellow  as  he  visits  the  primeval  forest  which 
once  shaded  the  village  of  Grand  Pre? 

2.  Describe  the  country  around  the  village. 


READING  AND  WRITING  75 

3.  Describe  the  way  the  houses  were  built. 

4.  How  did  the  people  of  the  village  spend  their 
evenings  in  summer  ? 

5 .  How  many  things  do  you  admire  in  E vangeline  ? 

6.  How  do  you  think  she  spent  her  time  ?     Can 
you  tell  from  the  description  of  her  father's  house  ? 

7.  Tell  the  story  of  Evangeline's  childhood. 

8.  What  time  of  year  is  it  when  the  story  opens  ? 
How  did  you  know? 

9.  Did  you  guess  that  the  story  was  going  to  be 
sad  ?     Why  ?     How  does  Longfellow  make  you  feel 
in  sections  II  and  III  that  calamity  is  coming  to  the 
village  ? 

10.  How  does   the  story   of  the  pearl  necklace 
show  the  justice  of  God  and  the  injustice  of  man? 

11.  For  what  purpose  had  the  notary  come  to 
Evangeline's  house? 

12.  WTien  Longfellow  says  the  "stars  blossomed," 
what  does  he  mean  and  to  what  is  he  comparing 
the  stars? 

13.  WTiat  was  the  curfew?     Why  did  they  cover 
the  embers  so  carefully  at  night  ? 

14.  Why  does  it  make  the  story  so  much  sadder 
to   have    the    betrothal    feast   of    Evangeline    and 
Gabriel  come  just  before  the  meeting  of  the  men  at 
the  church  ? 

15.  WTiat  was  the  royal  commission  the  English 
officer  brought  ?     Do  you  think  he  fulfilled  the  com- 
mand gladly  ?     Why  ? 

16.  How  do  the  English  come  to  be  the  governors 
of  Acadia  ? 


76  SOCIALIZING  THE   THREE  R'S 

17.  How  do  you  think  the  people  felt  when  they 
heard  the  command  of  the  king?     How  did  they 
show  their  feelings? 

18.  What  had  they  done  to  deserve  such  punish- 
ment? 

19.  Who  quiets  the  crowd  and  how  does  he  manage 
to  do  it? 

20.  Where    were   the   men   of   the   village   that 
night  ? 

21.  What  is  Evangeline  doing? 

22.  Describe  the  departure  of  the  Acadians  on 
the  ships.     Do  you  know  of  any  such  deportation 
of  whole  townships  in  recent  times  ? 

These  and  a  hundred  other  questions  l  more  or 
less  minute  will  suggest  themselves  to  the  teacher 
clever  at  seizing  the  points  necessary  for  understand- 
ing and  liking  the  tale,  and  likely  to  be  missed  by 
the  inexperienced  reader.  The  great  problem  with 
little  readers  is  to  catch  and  fix  attention.  The 
great  secret  of  later  successful,  rapid  reading  will  be 
this  power  of  rapid,  mental  fixation  and  observation. 
And  in  my  considerable  experience  as  a  high  school 
and  college  teacher,  I  have  found  a  lack  of  such 
attentive  observation  the  main  stumbling  point 
in  the  path  of  advanced  English  work.  Too  many 
pupils  fail  to  see  anything  but  words  in  what  they 
read ;  and  this  is  largely  because  in  the  lower  schools 
they  have  not  been  taught  to  look  for  meanings. 

1  See  Briggs  and  Coffman :  Reading  in  the  Public  Schools,  for  sugges- 
tions as  to  how  to  present  a  poem  and  as  to  the  direction  of  the  children's 
independent  reading.  (Chapter  on  Memorizing.) 


READING  AND  WRITING  77 

To  liberalize  literary  taste  then  in  the  grammar 
school,  we  must  drop  the  formal  aspects  of  English 
teaching;  select  our  reading  more  variously  so  as 
to  keep  within  the  range  of  childish  interests,  and 
yet  stimulate  to  intellectual  growth  and  effort ;  and 
train  the  child  from  the  first  to  a  thorough  appre- 
hension of  the  thing  he  reads. 

A  second  use  of  reading  often  resisted  by  teachers 
of  English,  since  it  seems  to  make  literature  a  utili- 
tarian adjunct  to  other  subjects,  is  letting  the  reading 
lesson  open  up  new  phases  of  life  or  fields  of  informa- 
tion. Literature  must  always  be  a  tool  to  one  means 
or  another  of  a  fuller  life,  and  facts  lie  at  the  root 
of  all  our  finer  experience.  Could  not  reading, 
while  remaining  still  a  joyous  art,  be  so  planned  as 
to  equip  the  child  with  some  of  the  knowledge  neces- 
sary for  a  rudimentary  understanding  of  our  modern 
social  and  economic  world  ?  Katherine  Dopp  in  her 
treatise  on  The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary 
Education,  has  described  the  repetition  in  childish 
development  of  the  historical  stages  through  which 
the  human  race  has  reached  its  present  state  of 
culture,  and  has  suggested  a  use  of  these  economic 
stages  in  school  play  and  manual  training.  Under- 
standing social  history  is  the  first  step  toward  under- 
standing society,  for  the  sociologist  and  for  the  lay- 
man too ;  and  living  social  history  in  games  and  play 
and  reading  social  history  in  their  story  books  is 
laying  the  ground  work  of  social  intelligence  for  the 
growing  child.  Even  the  best  grade  school  reading 
courses  seem  to  be  selected  without  much  regard  to 


78  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

development  of  subject  matter  or  progressive  inter- 
ests, but  solely  to  attract  children  and  fall  within 
their  comprehension.  Teachers  have  said  that  this 
and  this  and  this  will  be  "nice"  for  the  little  tots 
to  read,  and  an  aimless  niceness  is  the  main  feature 
of  the  resulting  program.  Yet  could  not  suitable 
and  attractive  reading  be  selected  which  would 
retrace  the  steps  of  human  progress  and  give  the 
child  both  a  liking  for  good  reading  and  a  story-book 
knowledge  of  evolution? 

The  fundamentals  of  economic  history  and  modern 
industrial  organization  have  been  outlined  in  a  new 
experimental  introduction  to  economics  for  the  sev- 
enth grade,1  as  individual  wants,  community  wants, 
land  ownership,  institutions,  production  of  wealth, 
labor  conditions,  capital  and  labor,  wages,  coopera- 
tion, transportation,  means  of  communication,  social 
control,  factories,  and  government.  Are  there  not 
enough  good  story  books  which  reproduce  all  these 
matters  for  the  different  stages  in  human  history  in 
terms  that  any  child  can  understand  ?  As  an  intro- 
duction to  thinking  of  the  ways  and  means  of  life, 
of  the  actual  economic  basis  of  existence,  the  sheerly 
necessary  individual  wants,  what  is  sounder  or 
more  fascinating  than  Robinson  Crusoe,  a  tale  which, 
read  aloud  together  and  re-read  again  and  yet  again 
alone,  is  for  the  most  part  well  within  the  reach  of 
second-  and  third-grade  pupils.  Why  has  this  story 
held  generation  after  generation  of  readers  of  all 

1  Elementary  Social  Science  by  Frank  M.  Leavitt  and  Edith  Brown, 
The  Macmillan  Company. 


READING  AND  WRITING  79 

ages,  without  emotional  subtilty  as  it  is  ?  Because 
it  is  a  tale  of  struggle  with  fundamental  obstacles,  of 
ingenuity,  and  of  action.  The  very  chance  of  his 
environment  makes  of  every  most  trivial  human  act 
a  problem,  a  mystery,  an  achievement.  Where 
shall  Crusoe  breakfast  on  the  desert  isle  ?  What  a 
romance  eating  becomes  under  the  circumstances! 
Where  shall  he  sleep  ?  What  shall  he  wear  ?  How 
shall  he  tell  the  time  ?  All  the  things  we  take  for 
granted  in  our  modern  city  life  are  here  stripped  to 
the  skeleton  of  the  need  they  meet  and  the  human 
toil  it  takes  to  produce  them.  Robinson  Crusoe  then, 
the  English  romance,  the  great  English  textbook  of 
elementary  economics,  for  our  first  long  piece  of 
reading.  And  what  wonderful  games  the  class  can 
play  with  Crusoe's  adventures  as  the  text!  What 
gorgeous  shipwrecks!  What  swimmings  to  land  in 
the  school  pool!  What  caves  of  chairs  and  tables 
in  the  corner  of  the  room  or  in  the  school  garden! 
What  hewing  and  building  and  rowing  of  boats! 
What  planting  of  barley !  What  tracking  of  Friday 
on  the  shore !  What  combats  with  cannibals  !  What 
cocoanuts,  and  parrakeets,  and  apes  a-gambol  in  the 
branches  overhead !  How  cheerfully  in  that  troub- 
lous Crusoe  epoch  of  my  own  existence,  I  should  have 
done  arithmetic  problems  involving  the  yield  of  his 
barley  or  the  time  of  his  captivity.  How  eagerly 
we  should  have  studied  the  geography  of  the  "can- 
nibal isles."  How  strenuously  toiled  to  master  alone 
the  coveted  text  and  tale,  to  read  as  often  and  as 
long  as  ever  we  should  please! 


80  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

And  for  the  changing  community  wants  of  suc- 
ceeding human  epochs,  there  are  a  whole  series  of 
tales  of  great  interest  and  historical  value.  For  the 
little  tots,  the  wealth  of  legend  and  folk  lore.  Then 
The  Early  Cave  Men,  The  Tree  Dwellers,  and  The 
Later  Cave  Men  by  Katherine  Dopp  and  The  Cave 
Boy  of  the  Stone  Age  by  Margaret  Mclntyre.  For 
more  advanced  yet  still  simple  social  life,  there  are 
Burton's  Stories  of  the  Indians  of  New  England  and 
better  still  Longfellow's  Hiawatha.  There  are  Haw- 
thorne's Wonder  Book  and  Guerber's  Story  of  the 
Greeks  ;  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome  and  Lyt- 
ton's  Last  Days  of  Pompeii;  The  Story  of  Europe  by 
Harding  and  Snodgrass ;  King  Arthur  and  His 
Knights  by  Warren ;  Lanier's  Boys'  Froissart;  Scott's 
Ivanhoe;  Harding's  Story  of  England;  Guerber's 
Story  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies;  and  Cooper's  sturdy 
if  flamboyant  tales  of  pioneers.  For  current  life 
with  its  problems  and  ideals,  there  are  Louisa 
Alcott's  Little  Women,  Spyri's  Heidi,  The  Man 
without  a  Country  by  Edward  Everett  Hale,  Dick- 
ens' Christmas  Carol,  The  Birds'  Christmas  Carol 
by  Wiggin,  Ouida's  Dog  of  Flanders,  London's  Call 
of  the  Wild,  and  a  score  of  other  fine  tales  suitable  for 
childish  reading  in  the  grades.  And  of  a  more  didac- 
tic nature  are  the  Lessons  in  Community  and  Na- 
tional Life1  now  issued  by  the  United  States  Bureau 
of  Education  in  connection  with  the  food  adminis- 

1  Write  to  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education  for  lists  of  prices  and  titles. 
These  leaflets  are  in  some  cases  rather  heavy  for  direct  reading  by  the 
class,  but  they  will  give  the  teacher  numerous  ideas  for  class  discussions. 


READING  AND  WRITING  81 

tration  and  containing  material  suitable  either  for 
oral  or  written  composition.  There  seems  scant 
reason  why  when  the  student  finishes  his  grade 
school  reading  course,  he  should  not  have  stored 
within  his  brain  the  great  facts  of  human  growth  and 
the  substructure  of  a  lively  social  consciousness. 

All  this  time  we  have  said  little  of  the  social  role 
of  writing  in  the  public  school.  Yet  writing  can 
play  a  leading  part  —  to  fix  in  the  child's  mind  what 
he  has  read,  to  formulate  the  things  of  interest  he 
has  seen  on  trips  from  school  to  market,  factory, 
slum  district,  store,  or  countryside,  and  to  describe 
the  interesting  and  significant  details  in  his  own 
daily  life  of  whose  existence  or  importance  he  has 
perhaps  been  unconscious.  The  proportions  already 
assumed  by  this  chapter  preclude  a  full  discussion 
of  the  method  of  teaching  composition  in  the  lower 
schools.1  But  a  hint  may  be  given  as  to  its  direc- 
tion into  channels  which  will  make  for  a  better  under- 
standing of  our  complex  modern  world.  How  my 
mother  spends  her  day.  What  my  father  does  every 
day.  What  the  servants  do  at  our  house.  What  I  do 
every  day.  What  is  the  street  cleaner  doing  and  why  ? 
What  is  a  policeman  ?  Why  does  the  doctor  come 
every  week  to  school  ?  Where  does  the  grocer  get 
his  vegetables  ?  What  becomes  of  the  wheat  we 
raise  on  our  farm?  Who  made  my  new  suit  of 

1  See  Appendix  II  for  a  list  of  references  on  the  teaching  of  the  sentence, 
the  unit  which  of  course  forms  the  natural  basis  of  elementary  school 
work,  and  whose  proper  presentation  will  obviate  the  necessity  of  formal 
grammar  in  the  grades. 


82  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

clothes  ?  What  are  the  parks  for  ?  Why  papa  pays 
rent  for  our  house.  Where  does  our  water  come 
from  ?  Who  owns  the  street  in  front  of  my  house  ? 
What  is  there  under  the  paving  in  our  front  street  ? 
What  do  I  pay  for  with  my  car  fare  ?  How  many 
things  do  we  eat  at  our  house  that  mamma  didn't 
cook  ?  Why  papa  pays  taxes.  Here  is  only  a  half 
start  down  the  avenue  of  limitless  possibilities  of 
socialized  writing  in  the  common  school. 

But  directing  the  pupils'  attention  through  their 
written  work  to  the  economic  and  civic  problems  of 
modern  life  is  but  a  fraction  of  the  social  duty  of 
the  composition  teacher.  In  fact,  language  itself 
must  grow  interesting ;  self-expression  must  be  made 
a  vital  part  of  living ;  and  speaking  and  writing  must 
become  spontaneous  play,  if  composition  is  to  be  the 
stimulus  for  successful  spelling  study,  if  making 
sentences  is  to  replace  grammatical  analysis,  and 
if  theme  topics,  no  matter  how  socially  important, 
are  to  be  more  than  a  stupid  bugbear  to  write  on 
which  is  but  to  hate.  I  have  said  that  my  own 
teaching  experience  proves  that  public  school  pupils 
write  and  talk  better  than  they  read.  But  I  repeat 
the  statement  with  many  misgivings,  and  with  the 
sorry  addition  that  they  like  to  read  much  better 
than  they  like  to  write  or  deliver  oral  themes  in  class. 
This  is  largely  because  in  the  lower  schools,  composi- 
tion work  has  been  made  a  set  exercise  and  not  a 
means  of  vital  self-expression.  The  successful  grade 
school  teacher  will  seldom  use  the  word  "composi- 
tion" to  her  class,  nor  will  she  hold  a  regular,  formal 


READING  AND  WRITING  83 

composition  lesson ;  she  will  create  a  situation  in 
which  the  pupils  will  be  eager  to  express  their  ideas, 
orally  if  there  is  time  for  all,  on  paper  if  there  is 
not,  or  if  a  more  permanent  record  is  desired.  Such 
situations  will  be  seen  to  abound  in  school  life,  if  we 
can  only  get  away  from  fixed  schedules  and  composi- 
tion textbooks  as  a  source  of  subject  matter  *  and  turn 
to  the  day-to-day  interests  of  the  children. 

If  we  expect  to  get  the  spirit  of  play  in  composition 
work  and  make  the  children  want  to  talk,  we  must 
find  topics  about  which  the  child  has  strong  desires, 
subjects,  as  Klapper  points  out,  like  "Shall  we  have  a 
relay  race  or  a  ring  game  at  recess  ?"  or  "What  kind 
of  dog  I  want  for  a  pet."  One  of  the  great  diffi- 
culties encountered  by  teachers  both  in  oral  and 
written  composition  is  getting  the  child  to  forget 
himself  and  let  himself  go  on  the  subject.  The 
trouble  lies  in  making  the  child  self-conscious  at  the 
start ;  he  will  not  think  of  himself  at  all,  but  only  of 
the  subject  if  the  situation  (of  which  the  teacher 
expects  composition  to  be  a  by-product)  can  only 
arise  spontaneously  and  contain  the  elements  of 
vital  interest  and  discussion.  Such  situations  often 
grow  out  of  ordinary  schoolroom  studies  and  the 
pupils  can  easily  be  got  to  talk  or  even  write  if 
questions  are  asked  by  the  teacher  which  call  for, 
not  mere  reproduction  of  subject  matter  studied, 
but  discussion  of  it  from  a  new  point  of  view, 
demanding  imaginative  thought  on  the  part  of  the 

1  An  English  textbook  is  all  too  often  a  crutch  for  a  lazy  or  unin- 
ventive  teacher. 


84  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

pupil.1  Often  there  is  a  chance  to  vitalize  the  study  of 
history  or  geography  by  the  play  of  the  imagination 
in  constructing  the  supposed  details  of  some  scene 
or  situation.  The  value  of  descriptive  guessing 
games  for  furnishing  topics  for  oral  or  written  compo- 
sition is  incalculable.  The  instinct  for  communi- 
cation, the  desire  to  share  interesting  information 
or  tell  a  story,  is  susceptible  of  endless  exploitation 
by  the  skillful  composition  teacher  in  the  grades. 
Here  appears  one  great  value  of  diversified  class 
reading  as  against  the  constant  employment  of  the 
uniform  group  method.  Children  love,  also,  to  be 
given  the  opening  sentence  or  situation  in  a  narrative 
and  then  be  left  to  complete  the  story.  They  will 
write  letters  with  interest  since  they  can  see  that  let- 
ters are  to  play  a  vital  part  in  their  later  life  and  since 
a  letter  seems  so  much  more  communicative  than  a 
mere  "composition."  Versification,  too,  has  great 
charm  for  little  folks,  especially  when  it  takes  the 
form  of  imitation  or  of  setting  words  to  familiar 
tunes.  All  these  devices  help  to  make  composition 
work,  whether  oral  or  written,  a  fascinating  part 
of  the  pupil's  play  life,  which  is  after  all  his  most  real 
life,  and  to  develop  his  joy  in  and  power  of  self- 
expression.  And  gradually  through  a  skillful  em- 
phasis upon  the  thought  units  of  their  informal 
composition,2  the  teacher  will  build  up  a  sense  of 

1  See  Charters'  Teaching  the  Common  Branches,  chapters  on  reading, 
language  work,  and  composition  in  the  grades. 

2  See  Mahoney's  Standards  in  English,  World  Book  Company,  Yonkers, 
N.  Y.,  for  material  on  building  up  the  sentence  sense.    See  also  Klapper's 
Teaching  of  English,   Appleton,  New  York  City. 


READING  AND  WRITING  85 

unity,  thought  relation,  sentence  structure  (the  term 
is  immaterial,  call  this  fundamental  grammatical 
principle  what  we  will,  the  thing  remains  the  same) 
which  will  emancipate  us  from  the  necessity  of 
grammar  drill;  keep  composition  out  of  the  realm 
of  drudgery  and  formal  exercise ;  and  give  it  to  the 
grade  school  sociologist  as  a  medium  through  which 
the  child's  observation  of  the  world  can  be  sharp- 
ened and  focused  and  his  knowledge  systematized 
and  molded  into  a  socially  useful  tool. 


IV 
SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC 

THE  history  of  curricula  shows  a  curious  rhythm ; 
it  is  a  spiral,  returning  on  itself,  yet  mounting  up- 
ward. Subjects  of  study  are  introduced  because 
they  have  an  urgent  practical  application;  people 
learn  to  teach  them;  specialists  in  them  appear; 
departments  are  created.  Then  through  some  freak 
of  progress,  their  practical  utility  is  lost.  The  world 
invents  a  new  process;  the  subject  is  no  longer 
needed  in  the  curriculum.  But  its  trained  teachers 
remain  attached  to  the  specialty,,  reluctant  or  un- 
able to  take  up  a  new  line  of  work.  The  older 
generation,  too,  having  itself  mastered  this  branch 
of  learning,  fondly  imagine  it  to  be  necessary  to  a 
liberal  education.  Then  it  is  we  begin  to  hear  that 
the  subject,  though  no  longer  practical,  has  great 
pedagogic  value.  It  is  a  mental  discipline,  a  drill, 
a  gymnastic ;  it  toughens  intellectual  fiber ;  it  trains 
the  mind  in  logical  processes !  Its  very  impractical- 
ity  is  cited  as  a  point  in  its  favor ;  it  is  an  exercise  in 
,  abstract  and  general  truth !  Such  subjects  are  the 
grammars  of  dead  languages,  once  invaluable  when 
science,  theology,  and  the  arts  turned  largely  to 
classical  sources ;  now  useful  mainly  to  the  historian 

86 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  87 

and  literary  scholar.  Such  a  subject  is  higher  mathe- 
matics when  required  of  the  average  college  student 
undestined  for  a  technical  career.  Such  are  many 
branches  of  elementary  mathematics,  like  partial 
payments  and  annual  interest  in  arithmetic,  of  infre- 
quent application  in  the  business  world  but  long 
retained  in  textbooks  because  their  method  was 
cumbersome,  and  difficult ;  because  they  made  such 
laboriously  good  problems!  Indeed,  a  great  part 
of  arithmetic  as  it  is  still  set  forth  in  grade  school 
texts  and  taught  in  many  and  many  a  school, 
shows  this  withdrawal  from  utility  and  academization 
into  abstract  processes. 

But  the  spiral  is  returning  on  itself.  Arithmetic, 
in  order  to  be  teachable,  is  made  practical  anew,  ap- 
plied to  actual  objects,  related  to  the  pupil's  experi- 
ence or  to  his  future  occupational  needs.  In  the 
lower  schools,  we  now  teach  arithmetic  by  the  object 
method  and  construct  "local"  problems  to  replace 
the  cut-and-dried  matter  of  the  text ;  in  our  secondary 
institution,  we  introduce  shop  geometry  and  algebra, 
mill  arithmetic,  practical  accounting,  and  the  like. 
But  excellent  as  are  the  results  of  these  practical 
improvements,  the  possibilities  of  mathematics  as 
a  social  study  have  been  little  developed  or  appre- 
ciated. Mathematics  is  the  tool  by  which  we 
measure,  divide,  and  master  the  facts  of  life.  It 
represents  in  skeleton  outline,  the  framework  of 
the  world.  It  is  coterminous  with  human  activity. 
Hence  to  study  applied  mathematics  is  to  study 
society.  Yet  the  steps  forward  already  taken  in 


88  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

the  teaching  of  mathematics  have  seldom  been  made 
with  recognition  of  this  fact.  In  a  current  peda- 
gogic journal,  the  author  of  a  valuable  practical 
article  on  the  teaching  of  grade  school  arithmetic 
speaks  of  establishing  a  closer  relation  "between 
the  problems  of  life  and  the  problems  of  arithmetic" 
as  though  they  were  somehow  different,  as  though  a 
problem  would  exist  "in  arithmetic"  except  as  it 
had  arisen  in  the  course  of  life.  This  same  author  in 
his  further  discussion  of  concrete  local  problem 
material,  thinks  always  of  choosing  problems  to 
illustrate  "arithmetical  principles"  and  not  of  using 
arithmetic  to  master  human  difficulties.  Indeed, 
the  practicalizing  of  arithmetic  in  the  lower  grades 
still  aims  largely  at  facilitating  instruction  in  proc- 
esses regarded  as  ends  useful  in  themselves  and  not 
for  the  social  context  of  their  application.  The 
Longan  method  of  primary  arithmetic,  revolution- 
izing as  it  did  the  teaching  of  decimals  and  fractions, 
telescoping  incredibly  the  time  required  for  their 
mastery,  dropping  into  the  second  and  third  grade 
what  had  dragged  unsatisfactorily  through  the  fourth 
and  even  the  fifth,  minimizing  the  labor  of  instruc- 
tion, increasing  the  enjoyment  of  the  pupils  and 
developing  their  powers  of  logical  analysis  —  even 
this  educational  departure,  beyond  whose  funda- 
mental idea  few  American  schools  have  far  progressed, 
meant  not  so  much  an  application  of  arithmetic  to 
life  processes  as  its  application  to  concrete  visible 
objects.  It  is  designed  to  make  arithmetic  easier, 
not  more  valuable.  It  contains  the  method  but  not 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  89 

the  idea  of  a  socialized  study,  of  an  arithmetic  which 
will  both  be  teachable  and  concrete,  and  also,  by 
its  relation  to  the  situations  in  life  where  its  use  is 
obviously  natural  and  necessary,  not  only  prepare 
the  student  for  its  practical  application  but  lead  him 
on  to  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  world  of  which 
these  situations  are  a  part. 

The  object  and  the  local  problem  are  the  starting 
point  for  all  vital  teaching  of  arithmetic;  let  us  see 
then  the  type  of  local  problem  in  which  pupils  will 
be  interested  and  which  can  serve  as  a  starting 
point  for  our  new  socialized  arithmetic.  Best  of  all 
will  be  the  competitive  game  involving  imitation  of 
the  grown-up  world.  Such  is  the  familiar  game  of 
playing  store,  which  is  capable  of  many  degrees  of 
complication  between  simple  buying  for  pennies  by 
the  first-grade  pupil  and  the  more  intricate  form 
adapted  to  the  teaching  of  rapid  addition  and  sub- 
traction in  decimals,  in  which  one  child  plays  the 
role  of  storekeeper,  one  is  delivery  boy,  and  the 
others  are  housekeepers,  calling  the  store  by  'phone, 
inquiring  the  prices  of  commodities,  making  an  order, 
and  then  paying  the  delivery  boy  who  brings  the 
goods.  The  storekeeper  must  prepare  an  itemized 
bill  and  add  it  up ;  so  must  the  housekeeper.  These 
must  agree,  and  the  delivery  boy  must  make  change. 
Whoever  first  sees  and  corrects  an  error  becomes 
delivery  boy.  This  game  is  played  with  real  money 
and  real  commodities  sold  at  current  prices  and  is  a 
never-ending  source  of  practice  and  delight.  It  is 
teaching  by  objects,  and  not  only  by  concrete  ob- 


90  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

jects,  but  by  familiar  objects  reproducing  an  enter- 
taining situation  within  the  child's  experience. 
But  it  has  no  great  social  value;  it  is  a  mere  peda- 
gogic lubricative  device.  However,  suppose  for  an 
instant  that  the  pupils  ask  why  potatoes  cost  so- 
and-so  much.  Here  is  the  chance  to  make  arith- 
metic lead  out  into  the  economic  world  and  explain 
that  world  to  the  child  in  terms  that  he  can  under- 
stand. 

"Where  do  potatoes  come  from?"  you  ask. 

"Out  of  the  ground  or  out  of  a  garden,"  some  one 
replies. 

"Where  are  the  gardens?" 

"They  are  in  the  country." 

"Who  raises  them?" 

"The  farmer." 

"How  does  the  grocery  man  get  the  potatoes  from 
the  farmer?" 

"The  farmer  brings  them  to  town  in  his  wagon." 

"But  suppose  he  lives  too  far  away?" 

"Then  they  come  on  the  train." 

"Are  they  brought  straight  to  the  grocer?" 

"No  —  they  go  to  the  market  or  to  the  whole- 
sale dealer  and  the  grocer  buys  them  there." 

"What  does  the  grocer  pay  the  wholesaler ?  Why 
is  it  different  from  what  the  grocer  charges  us  ? 
What  does  the  wholesaler  pay  the  farmer  ?  Why  is 
this  different  from  the  wholesale  price  ?  Why  does 
the  farmer  ask  this  much  for  potatoes?" 

"Because  it  costs  to  raise  them." 

"Well  — what?" 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  91 

Here  arises  an  interesting  series  of  calculations 
involving  land,  labor,  seed,  machinery,  fertilizer, 
taxes,  and  a  living  profit.  If  there  is  a  school  garden 
or  if  the  students  have  home  gardens,  the  problem 
is  acutely  interesting  and  very  simple.  Or  inquiries 
at  the  grocer's  as  to  the  origin  of  his  supplies  and 
trips  to  the  country  to  see  farms  and  truck  gardens 
are  often  possible.  Here  is  matter  for  countless 
inquiries,  games,  and  arithmetical  calculations.  Here 
is  the  whole  economic  problem  of  agricultural  pro- 
duction and  exchange,  of  land,  labor,  and  capital, 
cast  in  so  simple  a  form  that  very  young  children 
indeed  can  master  it.  Here  is  a  basic  lesson  in  the 
social  interdependence  of  the  modern  world;  and 
how  strikingly  would  this  be  true  if  some  article  of 
foreign  trade  were  brought  into  discussion!  And 
here  is  a  chance  to  view  life  in  terms  of  processes  and 
not  just  of  finished  articles ;  to  see  the  beginning, 
the  middle,  and  the  end  of  a  phenomenon  of  which 
we  usually  catch  but  a  fragmentary  glimpse ;  to 
give  the  child  logical  wholes  and  not  disjointed 
scraps  of  life.  If  you  are  dealing  with  a  country 
child,  you  have  only  to  reverse  the  process.  Manu- 
facture, mining,  cattle  raising,  shipping,  real  estate, 
and  public  utilities  —  all  the  economic  structure  of 
our  common  life  —  could  thus  be  penetrated  through 
the  gateway  of  applied  arithmetic.  Starting  with 
the  competitive  game,  not  a  mere  "made  up"  game 
but  one  imitative  of  social  processes,  the  child  ar- 
rives at  arithmetical  ability  and  a  concept  of  the 
modern  world. 


92  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

How  little  of  such  social  background  is  so  far 
found  in  the  average  grade  school  textbook  in 
arithmetic !  Largely  concerned  with  mensuration  as 
elementary  arithmetic  must  be,  we  have  a  series  of 
juggling  with  pecks  and  pints  in  limbo,  with  paper 
areas,  with  supposititious  paintings,  paperings,  car- 
petings  (horrible  dictu  in  these  days  of  sanitation !) 
and  pavings!  To  the  genius  of  the  teacher  is  left 
relating  all  these  matters  to  the  common  life,  and 
constructing  the  local  material  for  her  classroom  use. 
Yet  to  the  imaginative,  socially  conscious  instructor, 
how  rich  a  field  for  neighborhood  and  community 
study !  Paving  alone  furnishes  a  text  on  community 
cooperation  and  interdependence,  on  municipal 
economy  —  and  on  the  estimation  of  areas !  To 
play  tax  assessor  while  the  rest  of  the  class  represent 
holders  of  real  estate  of  different  types  is  a  joyous  ex- 
pression of  the  quite  human  instinct  for  domination, 
an  excellent  drill  in  percentages,  an  open  gateway 
into  discussions  of  one  sort  of  civic  responsibility. 
Does  your  community  depend  for  transportation 
upon  electric  trolleys  ?  What  is  the  trackage  ? 
What  the  daily  carry?  How  many  cars?  What 
their  capacity  ?  What  is  the  fare  and  why  ?  Where 
does  the  water  come  from  in  your  town  ?  How  big 
is  the  reservoir  ?  How  large  are  the  pipes  ?  What 
is  the  flow?  What  is  the  meter  rate  and  why? 
How  much  water  does  your  family  use  every  day  if 
your  monthly  bill  is  so-and-so  much  ?  The  ordinary 
economic  life  of  a  community  bristles  with  such 
"  open  sesames  "  into  social  arithmetic.  And  extraor- 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  93 

dinary  situations  like  current  war  taxes  will  not 
escape  the  alert  instructor.  What  is  the  nightly 
attendance  at  motion  picture  shows  in  your  town  ? 
How  much  will  the  government  reap  in  taxes  on 
each  night's  performance?  What  will  it  do  with 
this  money?  What  are  the  shipping  needs  of  our 
Allies  in  this  present  military  crisis?  How  many 
ships  have  they  afloat?  How  many  are  the  sub- 
marines sinking  month  by  month?  How  fast  are 
we  replacing  them  in  our  shipbuilding  yards  ?  How 
many  tons  of  shipping  must  we  have  to  supply  so- 
and-so  many  soldiers  at  the  front  with  food  and 
equipment  and  ammunition?  How  many  soldiers 
are  there  now  in  training  camps  in  this  country  ? 
If  they  are  all  sent  to  France,  how  many  ships 
must  be  transferred  to  the  war  department  service 
to  carry  them;  to  keep  them  furnished  with  sup- 
plies ?  How  many  cars  of  such  and  such  capacity 
will  it  take  to  move  these  soldiers  to  the  sea  coast, 
sitting  two  in  a  seat  ?  Sitting  three  in  a  seat  ?  If 
there  is  baggage  transportation  for  so-and-so  many 
pounds  of  military  luggage,  how  much  will  each 
soldier  be  able  to  take  to  France  ?  If  the  average 
life  of  an  aeroplane  motor  at  the  Front  is  one  hun- 
dred hours,  and  the  average  speed  is  so-and-so 
many  miles  an  hour,  how  many  motors  will  an  avi- 
ator exhaust  in  making  several  trips  of  various  dis- 
tances? The  food  problem  is  capable  of  similar 
exploitation. 

Is  it  fantastic   furthermore  to  imagine  arithmetic 
being  taught  not  process  by  process  but  situation 


94  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

by  situation,  even  industry  by  industry,  introduc- 
ing the  child  gradually  to  the  whole  fabric  of  our 
economic  life  ?  What  a  world  of  romance  in  figures 
there  would  be!  Could  the  class  not  pass  as  a 
whole  from  trade  to  trade  as  the  arithmetical 
processes  characteristic  of  each  were  mastered  and 
exhausted?  Commerce  and  banking  for  addition, 
multiplication,  division,  and  per  cents ;  real  estate, 
agriculture,  interior  decorating,  paving,  and  the  like 
for  plane  mensuration ;  building,  construction,  en- 
gineering, and  mining  for  the  cubes  —  we  might 
multiply  indefinitely  the  possibilities  of  arithmetical 
manipulation  of  topics  of  vital  civic  and  national 
interest  to  grown-ups  and  children  too.  But  this 
much  must  here  serve  as  illustration.  A  suggestive 
topical  summary  of  the  various  aspects  of  our  modern 
sopial  and  industrial  world  which  might  be  opened 
up  for  childish  exploration  through  the  gateway  of 
arithmetic,  together  with  the  type  of  problem  that 
can  be  used  in  each  connection  and  the  point  of  de- 
parture into  the  special  subject  through  games  or 
class  study  and  discussion,  will  be  found  in  the  ap- 
pendix.1 

There  is,  however,  one  connection  in  which  arith- 
metic may  be  used  to  develop  social  habits,  which  has 
at  this  present  writing  a  peculiar  interest.  It  has 
become  a  truism  to  remark  that  the  American  na- 
tional vice  is  thriftlessness.  Indeed,  except  for  a 
heightened  social  and  national  consciousness,  a 
livelier  sense  of  ideal  values  and  a  willingness  to 

1  See  Appendix  III. 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  95 

sacrifice  for  the  ideal,  the  most  cheering  thought 
which  the  frightful  international  calamity  of  the  Great 
War  leaves  the  American  observer  is  that  perhaps  the 
United  States  will  learn  to  husband  its  resources,  to 
think  ahead,  individually  and  collectively,  to  reculti- 
vate  the  old  virtue  of  thrift,  of  saving,  of  capital- 
izing, by  which  men  have  risen  in  nature  from  the 
precarious  level  of  the  beast  to  their  present  position 
of  security  and  dominance. 

We  have  been  an  extravagant  race  beyond  the 
dreams  of  most  barbaric  wastefulness,  extravagant 
from  the  millionaire  at  the  top  to  the  tramp  at 
the  bottom.  There  have  been  many  reasons  for 
this  extravagance.  Of  course  there  were  our  seem- 
ingly limitless  natural  resources.  But  more 
basic  and  insidious  is  the  indirect  character  of 
modern  spending.  A  commercial  age  is  naturally 
enough  marked  by  this  importance  of  money  in 
daily  life.  Formerly  we  got  things  directly  by  our 
own  labor  or  by  that  of  the  other  members  of  our 
family.  The  fathers  actually  raised  the  food  crop, 
the  meat,  the  leather,  the  cotton,  flax,  and  wool. 
The  mother  cooked  and  dried  and  cured  and  spun 
and  wove  and  fabricated  finished  garments.  The 
father  made  the  shoes  by  hand  at  home  of  winter 
nights.  The  men  folks  of  the  family  even  made  a 
large  proportion  of  their  tools  themselves.  But 
now  we  do  not  raise  our  own  food  and  produce  our 
own  clothes.  We  work  for  some  one  else  to  earn 
money  to  buy  food,  shelter,  and  clothing.  We  are 
careful  enough  of  the  things  we  produce  by  our  own 


96  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

labor  directly.  But  money  is  an  impersonated 
agent.  The  toil  it  represents  is  not  visible  in  the 
coin.  Of  money,  we  are  not  so  thrifty.  Yet  of 
money  we  have  need  to  be  thrifty  indeed,  for  in 
these  days  of  indirect  purchase,  upon  money  and 
our  ability  not  only  to  earn  it  but  to  save  it  and  to 
spend  it  well,  depend  our  comfort,  well-being,  and 
happiness.  Of  money  it  is  harder  to  be  thrifty 
than  of  labor  and  things;  yet  of  money  we  have 
need  to  be  more  thrifty  since  the  average  modern 
individual  is  incapable  of  satisfying  his  needs  directly 
by  creating  food,  clothing,  and  shelter  by  his  own 
labor. 

Combined  with  these  fundamental  causes  of 
American  thriftlessness  are  a  general  absence  of 
training  at  home  and  at  school  as  to  the  value  of 
money  and  the  proper  balance  of  expenditures.  The 
low  wages  of  labor  has  been  also  a  source^  of  thrift- 
lessness. Large  numbers  of  people  never  have 
enough  money  to  provide  for  their  necessities  and 
hence  they  never  learn  to  plan  ahead.  Sickness 
and  accident,  sweeping  away  the  hard-won  savings 
of  a  struggling  family  and  leaving  them  oftentimes 
dependent  on  charity  in  spite  of  all  their  efforts, 
are  further  discouragements  to  thrifty  habits.  And 
the  marginal  laborer  who,  save  as  he  may,  will 
never  be  able  to  amass  enough  to  keep  clear  of 
dependence  in  his  old  age  —  is  it  any  wonder  that 
such  persons  ask,  "What  is  the  use  since  the  end  is 
the  same?"  Without  hope  as  an  incentive,  how 
dreary  a  thing  after  all  can  penny  counting  be! 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  97 

Yet  these  causes  for  American  thriftlessness  are  one 
and  all  added  reasons  for  thrift.  And  on  the 
school  teacher  must  fall,  as  always,  the  task 
of  supplementing  the  lacks  in  home  and  public  life 
which  make  of  thriftlessness  our  national  sin. 

It  is  a  pedagogic  maxim  that  the  training  of  chil- 
dren should  be  incidental  and  indirect.  And  where 
in  the  school  curriculum  can  incidental  thrift  instruc- 
tion enter  more  naturally  and  easily  than  in  upper- 
grade  arithmetic?  In  spite  of  the  value  of  school 
savings  banks  and  the  purchase  of  thrift  stamps  and 
the  like,  it  is  inevitable  that  work  for  the  younger 
children  must  be  largely  done  through  the  fathers 
and  mothers  in  Parent-Teacher  associations.  This 
is  scarcely  the  place  to  enlarge  upon  the  possibilities 
and  methods  of  educating  the  parents  through  open 
programs  and  discussions ;  but  the  skillful  teacher- 
members  of  such  associations  can  do  much  to  arouse 
them  to  the  need  of  training  children  to  spend  and 
save  intelligently.1  The  value  of  the  ownership  of 
objects  capable  of  exploitation;  the  importance  of 
a  regular  allowance  for  even  the  smallest  school 
child ;  the  fact  that  the  parent  owes  the  child  an  al- 
lowance just  as  he  owes  the  child  any  other  necessity 
of  life"  or  training,  such  as  food,  clothing,  shelter, 
education,  or  discipline;  the  objection  to  irregular 
gifts  of  money  with  their  accompanying  irresponsi- 
bility, since  the  child,  never  having  a  certain  amount 
to  go  upon,  never  learns  to  plan  his  expenditures  and 

1  See  Kirkpatrick  on  The  Use  of  Money,  an  excellent,  simple  discussion 
of  the  subject. 


98  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

deny  himself  (the  denying  being  all  done  for  him  by 
others !) ;  the  fact  that  an  allowance  must  be  large 
enough  for  self-respect  but  not  large  enough  to  buy 
everything  the  child  wants,  so  that  he  may  learn  to 
choose  and  evaluate;  the  necessity  of  inflexibility 
in  making  the  child  keep  within  the  allowance,  of 
absolute  refusal  to  supplement  the  sum  by  casual 
gifts ;  the  matter  of  what  the  child  shall  do  with  this 
money  of  his  own,  whether  he  shall  be  required  to 
replace,  in  part  at  least,  damage  to  property,  buy 
Christmas  gifts,  pay  church  and  club  dues,  purchase 
necessities  like  pencils,  paper,  slates,  hair-ribbons, 
etc.,  or  whether  it  shall  be  used  wholly  for  personal 
indulgences;  the  question  of  how  the  purchase  of 
such  necessities  shall  be  gradually  intrusted  more 
and  more  to  the  child  as  the  size  of  his  allowance  is 
increased ;  the  necessity  of  giving  the  child  absolute 
freedom  in  expenditure  within  the  prescribed  limits 
so  that  he  may  learn  by  his  mistakes ;  the  question 
of  paying  children  for  work  they  do  at  home  and  of 
what  they  shall  be  required  to  do  without  pay ;  the 
fact  that  children  should  be  paid  the  actual  value 
of  a  piece  of  work,  no  more,  no  less ;  the  worth  of  re- 
quiring a  child  to  keep  at  least  for  a  specified  time 
an  itemized  account  of  his  expenditure ;  the  impor- 
tance of  talking  over  family  affairs  before  the  chil- 
dren to  some  extent  and  letting  them  see  how  the 
father  and  mother  plan  and  balance  their  expenditure 
—  here  are  only  a  few  topics  which  the  alert  primary 
teacher  will  introduce  into  the  Parent-Teacher  pro- 
gram on  The  Children's  Money  and  Its  Use. 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  99 

But  for  the  older  children,  vital  work  in  arithmetic 
will  teach  the  principles  and  methods  of  practical 
thrift.  Planning  the  school  garden  and  keeping 
accounts ;  estimating  the  cost  of  the  dishes  prepared 
in  the  cooking  class  and  consumed  in  the  lunch 
room ;  make-believe  enterprises ;  estimation  of  the 
cost  of  school  repairs,  and  municipal  improvements ; 
the  keeping  of  personal  accounts  and  finally  in  the 
upper  grades,  the  actual  teaching  of  the  family 
budget  system  1  will  be  a  long  step  forward  in  the 
inculcation  of  thrift  habits,  of  thoughtful  control 
of  material  environment.  The  idea  of  the  budget 
system,  for  some  time  in  use  in  progressive  business 
and  up-to-date  educational  institutions,  is  just  be- 
ginning to  penetrate  the  foggy  region  of  municipal 
finance.2  County,  state,  and  national  expenditures 
where  political  pull  and  special  influence  now  reign 
as  deciding  factors  instead  of  economy  and  necessity, 
will  undoubtedly,  under  the  pressure  of  popular  dis- 
content at  rising  taxes,  be  brought  under  the  same 
enlightening  regime.  But  the  average  home  pre- 
sents a  situation  of  financial  chaos;  an  almsgiving 
husband;  a  crumbpicking  wife;  and  a  lack  of  intel- 
ligence and  balance  of  expenditure  naturally  follow- 

1  Especially  easy  to  introduce  if  there  is  training  in  domestic  science. 

2  Perhaps  for  the  upper  grades,  a  study  of  the  municipal  budget,  of 
the  general  school  budget,  and  of.the  sub-budget  for  the  particular  school 
might  be  introduced  into  arithmetic  work.     If  there  is  some  improvement 
which  the  children  particularly  desire  for  their  school,  it  will  furnish 
motivation  for  such  a  budget  scrutiny ;  and  if  the  pupils  are  allowed  to 
make  estimates  for  their  new  improvement  and  lay  their  case  before  the 
Board  of  Education. in  person,  interest  will  rise  to  the  nth  power. 


100  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

ing  upon  indefiniteness  and  irresponsibility.  To  lay 
a  foundation  for  a  more  rational  domestic  finance 
will  be  the  function  of  the  arithmetic  teacher  who 
presents,  quite  as  a  matter  of  course,  problems  based 
on  the  partnership  idea  of  a  family  budget  made  out 
by  a  man  and  wife  deliberately  dividing  their  total 
income  into  fixed  proportional  sums  for  reinvestment 
and  saving,  for  food,  rent,  and  household  furnish- 
ings, clothing,  household  labor,  fuel,  education  of 
self  and  children,  medical  attention,  recreation, 
carfare,  children's  allowance,  and  the  rest. 

The  value  of  such  training  in  family  budgets, 
while  not  by  any  means  confined  to  the  girls,  is 
particularly  great  in  their  case  since  women  are  the 
spenders  of  the  nation.  We  hear  often  that  the 
hand  that  rocks  the  cradle  is  the  hand  that  rules 
the  world ;  but  it  is  much  more  immediately  true 
that  the  hand  that  spends  the  world's  money  does 
the  ruling.  It  happens  to  be  the  same  hand,  to  be 
sure,  and  it  ought  to  be  comparatively  easy,  once 
we  recognize  the  obligation,  to  teach  girls  to  think 
as  they  spend  that  by  their  choice  of  purchases,  they 
are  helping  to  decide  whether  their  money  shall  sup- 
port workers  in  good  conditions  at  educative  work 
or  in  bad  conditions  at  degrading  work;  whether 
they  will  buy  the  labor  of  women  in  the  sweat 
shops  of  the  east,  of  children  in  a  southern  cotton 
mill,  or  of  pallid  girls  toiling  to  exhaustion  for  a 
few  pennies  a  day  in  the  silk  factories  of  new  Japan. 
Of  course  we  do  not  deliberately  say  when  we  go 
into  a  department  store  to  purchase  a  costly  fabric, 


SOCIAL  ARITHMETIC  101 

"I  am  determined  that  a  girl  shall  sit  day  after 
day  for  twelve  long  hours  at  her  loom."  But  that 
is  often  what  we  accomplish  by  our  spending  and 
that  is  a  very  easy  thing  to  teach  pupils  when  start- 
ing out  from  the  basis  of  a  budget  system  or  even 
of  personal  accounts  to  plan  a  proper  and  intelligent 
balance  of  expenditures.1 

It  is  idle  to  hope  that  consumers  will  take  the 
trouble  either  individually  or  collectively  to  ascer- 
tain as  they  buy  the  conditions  under  which  each 
article  they  purchase  was  produced,  and  then  boy- 
cott those  industries  whose  labor  conditions  are 
unsatisfactory.  Prices  are  no  indication  of  either 
wages  or  working  conditions ;  and  other  informa- 
tion is  too  hard  to  get.  Demand  can  seldom  be 
mobilized  completely  and  continuously  enough  to 
affect  materially  methods  of  production.  But  con- 
sumers, when  once  thoroughly  aroused  to  their 
responsibility  for  the  lives  of  the  workers  whom 
their  money  —  however  indirectly  —  hires,  find  out 

1  In  the  following  books  will  be  found  information  as  to  the  methods 
by  which  various  commodities  are  manufactured,  which  can  be  utilized 
by  the  teacher  in  giving  instruction  on  the  ethics  of  spending  and  in 
arousing  quite  young  students  to  a  sense  of  responsibility  for  the  condi- 
tions under  which  the  things  they  use  are  made.  The  Path  of  Labor, 
Council  of  Women  for  Home  Missions,  New  York  City ;  Carpenter, 
How  the  World  Is  Fed,  How  the  World  Is  Clothed,  and  How  the  World  Is 
Housed,  American  Book  Co.,  New  York  City;  Women  Workers  of  the 
Orient  and  Old  Peoples  at  New  Tasks,  Student  Volunteer  Movement,  25 
Madison  Avenue,  New  York  City;  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  Industrial 
Accidents  and  Hygiene  Series  1-16;  Dublin,  Causes  of  Death  by  Occupa- 
tion, Washington,  Gov.  Printing  Office;  Kober,  Diseases  of  Occupa- 
tion and  Vocational  Hygiene,  Blakiston's  Son  &  Co.,  Philadelphia. 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  BARBARA 


102  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

the  simpler,  easier,  surer  way  to  safeguard  the  human 
beings  whom  they  ask  to  toil  for  them  in  field  or 
mine  or  factory  or  store.1  That  we  may  shop  at 
ease,  getting  the  things  we  wish  and  knowing  our 
money  buys  not  misery,  but  life  and  health  and 
happiness,  there  must  be  laws  that  say  how  men 
shall  work  and  where  and  when,  and  what  they 
shall  be  paid.  It  is  the  part  of  the  teacher  to  create 
a  demand  for  such  laws  by  making  her  pupils  feel 
the  intricate  interdependence  of  the  whole  social 
fabric,  and  our  consequent  responsibilities.  A  little 
dropping  will  wear  away  a  stone.  An  idea  rooted 
becomes  a  governing  force.  The  uneasy  conscience 
of  the  spending  public  results  at  length  in  labor 
legislation. 

Thus  through  game  and  problem,  through  inci- 
dental question  and  explanation,  may  arithmetic 
be  made  to  penetrate  the  whole  structure  of  social 
life  and  draw  its  outlines  for  the  rising  generation. 

1  As  labor  legislation  triumphs  in  Europe  and  America,  unscrupulous 
capital,  interested  in  short-time  profits,  has  already  begun  to  build 
factories  in  Asia  and  Africa,  where  cheap  labor  and  raw  materials  are 
at  hand,  and  employers  are  as  yet  unmolested  by  laws  or  unions  in 
their  exploitation.  It  is  thus  necessary  for  the  consumer  of  the  future 
to  develop  a  long-distance  imagination  and  conscience  if  he  is  to  fulfill 
his  social  responsibility  toward  labor. 


HISTORY 

IN  the  teaching  of  history,  the  social  education 
of  the  future  finds  its  best  ally.  No  subject  so  lends 
itself  to  the  interpretation  of  the  modern  social  and 
industrial  organization;  no  subject  so  awakens  na- 
tional consciousness  and  vigorous  national  spirit; 
and  no  subject  so  surely  widens  the  horizon  and 
prepares  the  mind  for  a  broader  view  of  human 
destiny,  for  a  "parliament  of  nations,  a  federation 
of  the  world."  Yet  its  vast  social  resources  are 
only  now  beginning  to  be  tapped  in  non-collegiate 
education.  In  our  colleges  and  universities,  the 
military  and  political  view  of  history,  with  its  text- 
book chronologies  of  reigns  and  battles  and  its  por- 
trait gallery  of  splendid  heroes,  has  long  been  replaced 
by  a  study  of  history  as  a  laborious  human  growth, 
an  evolution  of  institutions,  a  ferment  of  ideas  and 
social  forces,  a  phenomenon  in  which  kings  and  gen- 
erals are  only  the  foam  on  the  crest  of  the  wave,  only 
the  hand  or  tool  of  gigantic  movements  welling  up 
from  the  economic  and  social  base  of  any  given  civ- 
ilization. This  conception  has  found  its  way  into 
high  school  teaching  in  many  and  many  an  excellent 
text  like  West's  Ancient  History  and  Robinson's 

103 


104  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

now  almost  classic  History  of  Western  Europe.  And 
the  methods  of  many  a  high  school  instructor  are 
bent  upon  making  his  students  understand  the 
development  rather  than  memorize  the  picturesque 
events  of  human  history.  But  comparatively  little 
has  yet  been  done  to  socialize  the  teaching  of  history 
in  the  elementary  schools. 

Indeed  there  is  grave  doubt  in  the  minds  of 
many  educators  as  to  the  feasibility  of  such  social- 
ization. No  one  who  follows  the  excellent  teaching 
of  history  now  done  in  our  up-to-date  secondary  insti- 
tutions can  fail  to  perceive  that  the  gains  have  been 
accompanied  by  very  definite  and  obvious  losses. 
The  average  high  school  senior  can  tell  you  with 
glibness  and  considerable  real  intelligence  what  was 
the  course  of  thought  in  a  given  epoch,  what  were 
its  causes  in  contemporary  economic  and  social 
conditions,  and  what  were  its  influences  upon  insti- 
tutional development.  He  no  longer  talks  of  kings, 
generals,  lawgivers,  and  statesmen;  he  talks  of 
social  forces.  He  no  longer  talks  of  King  Arthur 
and  the  Round  Table,  but  of  the  land  tenure  and 
the  feudal  system.  He  no  longer  talks  of  Luther, 
but  of  the  Reformation.  In  becoming  social,  his- 
tory has  ceased  to  be  biographical.  In  ceasing  to 
be  biographical,  it  has  ceased  to  be  vivid.  In  ex- 
plaining life,  we  have  ceased  to  describe  it.  In 
talking  about  movements,  we  have  forgotten  indi- 
viduals. But  all  the  world  knows  that  a  child,  like 
a  poet,  loves  an  individual  better  than  a  movement 
and  a  tale  better  than  an  explanation.  And  the 


HISTORY  105 

younger  the  child,  the  more  true  this  maxim  is. 
Do  high  school  students  read  their  new  scientific 
histories  with  the  thrill  our  fathers  got  from  Plutarch, 
Prescott,  and  Macaulay? 

A  great  deal  has  been  done,  it  is  true,  to  render 
the  new  scholarship  picturesque  and  to  keep  the 
story  quality  in  history.  Historical  fiction  has 
succeeded  to  fictional  history  and  its  results  are  by 
no  means  despicable  though  usually  quite  second 
rate.  Nevertheless,  we  must  admit  that  we  have 
ripened  our  methods  faster  than  we  have  ripened 
our  high  school  students;  and  that  the  scientific 
study  of  history  has  not  been  as  yet  successfully 
adapted  to  secondary  education.  Therefore  when 
it  is  proposed  to  carry  the  point  of  view  of  social 
interpretation  into  the  grammar  grades  as  well, 
the  skeptic  looks  upon  the  proposal  with  a  certain 
quite  justified  suspicion. 

The  fact  remains,  however,  that  the  study  of 
history  is  valuable  just  because  it  does  serve  to 
explain  the  course  of  human  evolution.  Not  only 
is  it  The  Great  Tale,  The  Universal  Fiction  whose 
Author  transcends  in  imagination,  in  plot  structure, 
and  in  gripping  interest  all  human  novelists,  but 
it  is  the  touchstone  by  which  we  understand  our 
world  and  judge  the  worth  or  danger  in  this  and 
that  aspect  of  contemporary  life.  Thus  since  the 
majority  of  our  pupils  receive  in  the  grades  their 
only  education,  it  is  most  of  all  imperative  that  in 
the  grades,  history  should  be  so  taught  as  to  give  the 
pupil  some  notion  of  the  great  stages  in  human 


106  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

progress ;  of  the  trend  of  social  evolution ;  of  the 
origin,  growth,  and  present  nature  of  our  social,  eco- 
nomic, and  political  institutions;  and  of  the  origin 
and  history  of  the  great  nations  of  the  world,  their 
respective  contributions  to  culture,  and  the  funda- 
mental unity  of  their  higher  interests  and  aims.  As 
a  preparation  for  the  cooperative  world  organization 
of  which  we  dream,  each  American  boy  and  girl 
must  be  made  to  see  that  modern  civilization  has 
swept  away  the  old  boundaries  and  separatisms 
which  we  once  knew ;  that  we  live  in  a  world  which  is 
one,  economically,  socially,  and  politically ;  that  what 
happens  to  one  individual  happens  to  all  the  human 
race ;  and  that  there  is  no  life,  no  hope,  no  progress 
possible  for  men  and  women  in  the  future  that  is 
not  a  free  and  democratic  international  progress 
forward  together. 

But  how  can  such  a  task  be  achieved  in  seven 
short  years  and  with  the  youthful  students  of  our 
grammar  schools?  Needless  to  say,  exhaustive 
historical  knowledge  cannot  be  achieved,  nor  can 
we  expect  of  mere  children  any  profound  philosophy 
of  history.  But  by  the  well-trained  grammar  school 
instructor,  the  groundwork  can  at  least  be  laid, 
and  certain  raw  materials  for  historical  intelligence 
can  be  presented  in  such  a  way  that  the  pupils'  sub- 
sequent thinking  will  be  in  the  right  direction  and 
that  they  will  perhaps  be  able  later  on  to  work  out 
for  themselves  a  rudimentary  but  sound  political 
philosophy.  The  grade  school  is  the  place  for 
narrative.  Let  the  child  hear  and  see  the  magic 


HISTORY  107 

tale.  But  let  the  teacher  understand  and  select 
so  that  this  factual  narrative  will  contain  the  in- 
formation necessary  for  understanding  the  national 
and  world  problems  our  future  citizens  may  be 
called  upon  to  meet.1 

And  where  shall  we  begin  our  story?  Where 
history  and  literature  begin,  in  the  folk  legend  and 
the  fairy  tale,  in  the  mythology  of  ancient  civiliza- 
tion, in  the  history  of  strange  old  peoples,  of  the 
Hindoos,  the  Chinese,  the  Assyrians  and  Hebrews, 
the  Egyptians  and  Phoenicians,  the  Greeks  and  the 
Romans  —  nations  whose  story  has  for  the  child  a 
congenial  directness  and  simplicity;  nations  whose 
early  art  has  for  him  an  understandable  and  imitable 
quaintness ;  nations  whose  life,  manners,  and  legends 
furnish  rich  material  for  his  dramatic  play.2  Then 
come  the  days  of  feudalism  and  chivalry  which  appeal 
so  strongly  to  the  boy  of  ten  or  twelve,  stories  of 
vigorous  action,  of  bravery,  of  devotion,  of  dawning 
social  order  and  national  awakening.  And  then 
the  political  era,  with  its  national  rivalries,  its  class 
struggles,  its  colonial  enterprises,  its  bursting  energy 
and  dramatic  conflicts.  And  last  and  most  precious, 
our  own  American  history,  a  thrilling  chapter  in 
that  drama  of  freedom  of  which  the  whole  world 
supplies  the  text.  But  let  us  remember  that  Amer- 

1  Note  that  this  plan  throws  upon  the  normal  school  the  duty  of 
training  elementary  teachers  far  more  thoroughly  than  heretofore  in 
history. 

2  See  Greek  Photo  Plays  for  children  by  Effie  Seachrest,  Rand  Mc- 
Nally,  a  set  of  suggestive  dramatizations  of  Greek  myths  for  use  with 
third  and  fourth  grades. 


108  SOCIALIZING  THE   THREE  R'S 

ica  is  after  all  only  a  chapter.  Why  do  we  teach 
our  children  our  own  Colonial  history  as  though 
there  could  have  been  a  Patrick  Henry  on  this  side 
the  Atlantic  without  a  William  Pitt  or  an  Edmund 
Burke  upon  the  other  ?  As  though  our  own  Revolu- 
tion were  a  thing  apart  and  not  merely  a  phase  of 
that  larger  Anglo-Saxon  struggle  for  self-government, 
which  in  turn  is  part  of  a  world  drama  greater  still  ? 
Britain,  America,  France,  Italy,  Greece,  Russia,  per- 
haps one  day  Germany — here  is  the  grand  continued- 
in-our-next  serial  of  democracy,  whose  vivid  outlines 
will  hold  the  youthful  reader  to  the  end  and  bind  all 
nations  in  the  circle  of  a  common  development. 

Not  only  the  sweep  of  political  thought  but  the 
growth  and  change  of  social  and  industrial  institu- 
tions can  be  best  brought  home  to  the  child  by  the 
intelligently  guided  study  of  history.  In  another 
chapter,  we  have  seen  the  next  steps  in  industrial 
progress  and  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  industrial 
peace.  Only  historical  perspective  can  take  the 
bitterness  from  our  economic  conflict ;  only  historical 
perspective  can  make  labor  patiently  constructive; 
only  historical  perspective  can  reconcile  capital  to 
democratic  change.  But  except  for  the  mechanical 
evolution  of  transportation,  grade  school  teaching 
has  scarcely  touched  upon  industrial  history.  We 
need  to  rewrite  our  textbooks  for  the  lower  schools, 
as  indeed  we  are  rapidly  doing  in  these  days,  so 
as  to  present  pictorially  to  the  child  the  actual  world 
in  whose  midst  historical  events  took  place,  the  ac- 
tual daily  life  and  work  of  the  people  in  other  times 


HISTORY  109 

than  ours.  Thus  by  comparison,  he  will  recognize 
for  the  first  time  contemporary  usages  and  insti- 
tutions, and  see  their  significance  by  tracing  their 
origin  in  other  modes  of  life. 

Professor  Leavitt,  formerly  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  worked  out  with  his  classes  in  the  School 
of  Education  an  ingenious  plan  for  rewriting  Ameri- 
can history  to  bring  out  those  points  necessary  for 
social  intelligence.1  History,  according  to  Dr.  Leav- 
itt, is  merely  the  account  of  how  men  have  satisfied 
their  personal  and  community  wants  in  each  suc- 
cessive epoch.  These  wants  are  satisfied  through 
production,  involving  land,  labor,  capital,  and  man- 
agement; and  their  satisfaction  is  governed  by 
three  principles  regulative  of  human  action  :  personal 
rights  or  freedom,  property  rights  or  ownership, 
and  social  control  or  government.  Detailed  discus- 
sion of  these  wants  and  of  their  satisfaction  and 
regulation  includes  an  account  of  such  matters  as 
land  ownership,  wealth  production,  capital  and 
labor,  labor  conditions,  wages,  factories,  corpora- 
tions, transportation,  means  of  communication,  so- 
cial institutions,  taxes,  and  governmental  activities. 
In  picturing  life  at  any  given  epoch,  all  these  factors 
should,  according  to  Dr.  Leavitt,  receive  considera- 
tion. The  idea,  though  somewhat  heavy  and  ana- 
lytical for  direct  use  with  grade  school  students, 
still  holds  much  that  is  suggestive  to  the  teacher  2 

1  This  plan  was  designed  for  use  with  prevocational  pupils  in  the  upper 
grammar  grades. 

2  Much  of  this  material  can  be  developed  in  historical  class  games. 
The  continued-in-our-next  epical  story,  so  popular  in  the  marionette 


110  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

as  to  the  selection  of  historical  material  which  will 
help  the  student  to  understand  by  contrast  with 
the  past  the  world  in  which  he  lives  and  the  economic 
institutions  (like  the  factory  system,  the  corpora- 
tion, or  the  labor  organization)  upon  which  his  life 
depends  but  which  grade  school  histories  and  grade 
school  teachers  have  done  little  so  far  to  explain. 

We  have  yet  to  discover  the  inspired  historian  who 
can  paint  this  picture  of  world  history  with  the 
bright  color  and  simple  composition  necessary  for 
childish  interest  and  yet  with  the  critical  selective 
judgment  to  discern  what  are  the  significant  facts 
that  will  help  the  child  to  subsequent  intelligence. 
But  much  progressive  work  is  being  done  by  individ- 
ual teachers  and  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when  no 
grade  school  will  graduate  its  students  without  some 
general  knowledge  of  world  history  :  of  the  share  of 
each  foreign  nation  in  this  story;  of  its  relation, 
racially,  culturally,  politically,  and  commercially,  to 
our  own;  and  of  the  aims,  aspirations,  struggles, 
and  triumphs  of  American  social,  industrial,  and 
political  democracy. 

The  mixed  character  of  our  immigrant  population 
is  indeed  a  challenge  to  such  teaching,  a  challenge 
which,  under  existing  conditions,  cannot  long  be 

theaters  of  Latin  peoples,  is  a  delightful  method  of  drawing  the  whole 
class  sooner  or  later  into  a  story  game  and  of  ultimately  reproducing 
the  whole  fabric  of  domestic,  social,  political,  economic,  and  military  life 
of  a  by-gone  era.  Such  tales  as  those  of  Beowulf,  Roland,  and  Charle- 
magne, Ulysses,  and  Hiawatha  lend  themselves  to  this  treatment.  Read 
Browning's  autobiographical  poem,  Development.  See  also  Guerber's 
Story  of  the  Epic. 


HISTORY  111 

disregarded.  The  War  has  shown  us  how  hampering 
and  dangerous  to  national  strength  is  the  unassim- 
ilated  foreign  element  which  as  yet  we  have  done 
little  systematically  to  Americanize ;  and  whose 
children,  when  enrolled  in  our  public  schools,  find 
nothing  on  to  which  they  can  piece  their  early  train- 
ing and  experience,  but,  on  the  contrary,  must  begin 
all  over  again  to  learn  the  ways  and  the  history  of 
a  country  apparently  quite  disconnected  from  and 
often  contemptuous  of  or  hostile  to  their  native 
land.  How  different  would  be  their  feeling,  how 
much  more  rapid  and  easy  their  Americanization  if 
they  found  world  history  being  taught  in  the  public 
schools,  a  world  history  in  which  their  native  country 
had  a  place  and  which  showed  how  American  his- 
tory, American  institutions,  and  American  ideals 
are  only  a  part  of  the  great  struggle  for  democracy 
throughout  the  world;  how  we  are  ahead  in  this 
struggle  as  compared  with  the  lands  from  which 
they  come ;  and  how  loyalty  to  America,  their  new 
fatherland,  means  that  all  the  world  will  profit  by 
its  progress  and  be  lifted  nearer  and  nearer  to  our 
common  human  goal! 

Germany  has  been  able  by  a  rigid  educational 
program  centered  about  German  history  to  swing 
her  people  almost  as  a  unit  in  the  wake  of  a  world 
aim  narrowly  Teutonic  in  its  character.  Cannot 
America  through  a  more  enlightened  policy  imbue 
her  people  with  a  world  idea  of  mutual  trust,  honor, 
and  cooperation,  for  which  our  foreign  population 
would  be  the  most  active  missionaries?  The  story 


112  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

of  the  early  European  migrations  is  a  romantic 
one  which  any  child  can  comprehend.  The  story  of 
America  is  but  another  phase  of  these  migrations. 
Europe  is  a  family  cut  by  artificial  national  frontiers, 
and  America  the  melting  pot  which  proves  after  all 
is  said  and  done,  its  racial  homogeneity.  Let  us 
then  teach  our  children  not  only  the  American 
chapter  of  the  story  but  the  context  that  gives 
American  history  its  world  meaning.  For  only 
thus  can  we  make  of  American  history  an  inspira- 
tional source  of  national  unity  for  that  three-fourths 
of  our  population  to  whom  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  count 
for  nothing  by  blood  and  heritage,  but  to  whom 
America  as  the  triumphant  western  wing  in  the 
great  world  battle  for  democracy  is  a  thrilling  ideal 
to  which  they  yield  willing  allegiance  and  support. 
American  history  thus  widens  to  the  cosmopolitan. 
To  be  an  American  is  to  be  a  brother  of  Leonidas, 
Brutus,  Joan  of  Arc,  Winkelried,  Cromwell,  Kos- 
ciusko,  Washington,  Garibaldi,  Lincoln,  Kitchener, 
and  Papa  JofFre  —  all  heroes  who  have  fought  for 
freedom  deck  the  pages  of  our  story.  And  our 
own  gallant  colonial  struggle  and  Revolution;  our 
costly  civil  war;  our  development  of  free  institu- 
tions; our  Cuban  intervention;  and  our  participa- 
tion in  the  present  world  conflict  rise  to  an  even 
higher  and  nobler  plane  when  viewed  as  links  in 
the  chain  of  a  great  world  effort  and  idea.  Our 
history  peculiarly  fits  us  for  a  nationalism  which  is 
only  a  step  toward  international  brotherhood.  A 
continent  settled  in  the  cause  of  freedom;  a  nation 


HISTORY  113 

born  of  a  war  for  representative  government;  a 
government  formed  of  the  union  of  many  sovereign 
states  cooperating  for  the  common  weal;  a  mixed 
but  harmonious  population  which  for  centuries  has 
sought  these  shores  in  quest  of  liberty  —  here  is  a 
story  whose  teaching  will  result  not  in  a  narrow  and 
provincial  nationalism  dangerous  to  world  safety, 
but  in  the  generous  extension  to  international  pol- 
itics of  the  American  federal  idea. 


VI 
ART  FOR  LITTLE  FOLKS 

FROM  time  immemorial,  we  have  recognized  that 
the  love  of  beauty  is  the  basis  of  all  dependable, 
spontaneous  morality.  Men  will  be  habitually  good 
rather  than  bad  and  do  habitually  right  rather  than 
wrong,  not  because  they  fear  punishment,  not  even 
because  their  intellect  instructs  them  that  this  or 
that  is  the  good,  the  right,  the  social  act  to  perform, 
but  because  the  good,  the  right,  the  social  act  seems 
beautiful,  pleasing,  and  attractive ;  and  the  wrong, 
the  bad,  and  the  unsocial  act  ugly,  unpleasing,  and 
repulsive.  Refined  tastes,  instinctive  preference 
for  beauty  and  for  harmony,  these  are  the  sure  and 
steady  sources  of  all  wholesome  living,  the  sources 
which  operate  automatically,  instantly,  unreflec- 
tively,  from  within,  and  in  the  absence  of  external 
compulsions.  To  love  beauty  in  this  sense,  to  carry 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  within  one's  soul,  involves 
more  than  a  mere  love  of  beauty  hi  its  visible,  sensu- 
ous forms,  more  than  a  liking  for  pretty  colors, 
pretty  pictures,  pretty  music,  or  artistic  furniture. 
But  in  the  training  of  the  very  young,  it  is  necessary 
to  begin  with  what  is  sensuous  and  objective  as  a 
foundation  for  and  introduction  to  the  higher  spir- 

114 


ART  FOR  LITTLE  FOLKS  115 

itual  values.  Thus  in  our  lower  schools,  art  work  of 
various  sorts  has  rightly  become  an  important  part 
of  the  curriculum,  since  through  it  the  child  most 
easily  learns  the  principles  of  beauty  and  harmony, 
balance,  and  proportion  that  form  the  necessary 
framework  of  an  ordered  life. 

Such  art  instruction  has  up  to  the  present  in  the 
grammar  grades  consisted  principally  of  drawing, 
painting,  modeling,  and  various  craft  work  in  wood, 
leather,  and  textile  materials.  This  training,  once 
so  formal  and  abstract,  is  being  gradually  adapted 
to  the  pupil's  daily  life  and  interests.  He  draws 
objects  and  scenes  from  his  own  vital  experience, 
not  the  old  prescribed  geometrical  arrangements  of 
the  teacher's  childhood  days.  He  makes  in  the 
manual  training  lesson,  not  formal  exercises,  but 
things  for  personal  and  family  use.  This  is  all  good 
and  as  it  should  be.  But  little  has  been  done  as 
yet  in  a  systematic  way  to  form  childish  tastes  or 
to  familiarize  young  children  understandingly  with 
the  work  of  great  masters  in  the  field  of  decoration, 
illustration,  painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  or  in- 
dustrial art.  And  almost  nothing  has  been  done  to 
tap  the  vast  reservoir  of  social  history  which  these 
subjects  represent. 

Yet  much  of  this  material  is  eminently  suitable 
for  presentation  even  in  the  primer  grades,  the 
decorative  and  industrial  arts  (particularly  of  more 
primitive  peoples)  being  especially  well  adapted  for 
the  play  and  study  of  the  youngest  children,  because 
they  are  the  outgrowths  of  basic  human  activities 


116  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

which  all  children  can  understand  and  which  they 
love  to  imitate. 

Suppose  for  instance  that  in  the  telling  of  Indian 
legends,  the  subject  of  basketry  is  touched  upon. 
What  a  wealth  of  artistic  and  social  material  lies 
ready  to  our  hands !  There  is  a  work  the  child  can 
do  himself!  Here  are  objects  with  which  he  can 
play,  whose  relation  to  daily  life  can  be  easily  made 
clear ;  here  are  principles  of  construction  and  deco- 
ration which  can  be  traced  simply  and  directly  to  the 
life  and  habits  and  surroundings  of  the  people  which 
gave  them  birth,  a  life  full  of  romance  and  interest 
for  the  imaginative  child;  here  is  a  treatise  worth 
many  didactic  volumes  on  conventional  design  and 
appropriate  decoration ;  here  is  the  whole  philosophy 
of  industrial  art  suddenly  taking  on  the  form  of  a 
thrilling  story,  replete  with  human  interest,  of  ines- 
timable value  as  a  social  history,  a  picture  of  life 
under  other  conditions  than  our  own,  working  out 
its  own  art  in  answer  to  its  own  needs. 

But  how,  you  ask,  are  we  to  draw  from  the  sub- 
ject of  Indian  baskets  this  complex  informatory 
matter?  At  this  point  in  our  discussion,  it  may 
perhaps  be  helpful  to  suggest  by  a  sample  lesson 
the  treatment  which  can  be  accorded  any  such  prob- 
lem in  decorative  and  industrial  art. 

A  Study  of  Indian  Basketry  for  Third  Grade 
Children 

A  long  time  ago  before  Columbus  discovered 
America  and  before  the  white  people  came  across 


ART  FOR  LITTLE  FOLKS  117 

the  ocean  to  settle  in  what  is  now  the  United  States, 
great  tribes  of  Indians  wandered  here  and  there  over 
the  hills  and  plains  of  North  America.  If  you  have 
read  the  story  of  Hiawatha,  you  know  how  these 
Indians  lived  by  hunting  and  fishing,  moving  in 
tribes  from  place  to  place  as  the  wild  animals  were 
all  killed  of!  by  the  hunters.  Instead  of  houses, 
the  Indians  lived  in  a  sort  of  tent,  or  wigwam,  made 
sometimes  of  skins  and  sometimes  of  twigs  and 
leaves.  These  wigwams  could  be  put  up  and  taken 
down  more  quickly  than  our  heavy  stone  and  brick 
and  frame  houses  and  this  made  it  easy  for  an  Indian 
village  to  move  when  the  food  supply  was  exhausted 
or  a  dangerous  enemy  came  into  the  neighborhood. 
The  Indians  did  not  have  much  furniture  in  their 
houses.  In  fact,  they  did  not  know  how  to  make  a 
great  many  things  which  we  use  every  day.  They 
had  not  learned  how  to  dig  metal  out  of  the  earth  and 
melt  and  refine  it  so  as  to  make  iron  and  steel  and 
tin  and  copper  and  aluminum.  They  had  no  steel 
knives  and  weapons;  no  tin  pans;  no  iron  kettles. 
Their  knives  and  arrow  heads  and  hatchets  were 
made  out  of  stone.  Do  you  think  you  could  make  a 
stone  sharp  enough  to  cut  meat  or  chop  down  a 
tree  ?  The  Indians  could !  Instead  of  pots  and  pans 
and  dishes,  what  do  you  suppose  they  sometimes 
used  to  do  their  cooking  in?  And  what  do  you 
suppose  they  used  to  carry  their  food  and  their 
other  household  possessions  when  they  traveled 
from  one  place  to  another  ?  You  never  could  guess. 
Baskets!  They  cooked  in  baskets.  They  ate  out 


118  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

of  baskets.  They  used  baskets  instead  of  a  pantry 
and  an  icebox.  They  carried  everything  in  baskets. 

I  suppose  you  do  not  see  how  the  Indians  could 
cook  in  baskets.  Indian  baskets  were  usually 
made  out  of  grass  woven  together  very,  very  skill- 
fully. Sometimes  the  grass  was  woven  together  so 
closely  that  the  baskets  would  actually  hold  water. 
They  were  shaped  like  bowls  and  jars  and  pans  and 
were  big  and  little  and  thick  and  thin.  Now  imag- 
ine that  you  had  a  basket  shaped  like  a  great  bowl, 
and  that  you  wanted  to  cook  corn-meal  mush  (you 
know  we  still  call  yellow  corn  meal  Indian  meal 
because  it  was  the  Indians  who  first  taught  us  to  eat 
the  corn  we  all  like  so  well)  or  succotash  (that  is 
also  something  good  which  the  Indians  taught  us 
to  eat).  Well  then,  what  would  you  do?  You 
would  mix  up  the  corn  meal  and  water  in  the  water- 
tight basket.  You  couldn't  put  the  basket  on  the 
fire,  you  know,  because  it  would  burn.  But  you 
would  heat  some  clean,  smooth,  round  stones  in  the 
fire,  and  when  they  were  hot,  you  would  drop  the 
stones  right  into  the  basket  with  the  corn  meal 
and  water  and  pretty  soon  the  mush  would  begin 
to  cook.  Try  it  the  next  time  you  go  to  a  picnic 
and  have  a  camp  fire.  You  can  use  a  kettle  instead 
of  a  basket,  because  very  few  of  us  now  have  baskets 
fine  enough  to  keep  the  mush  from  leaking  out. 

You  can't  imagine  how  fine  and  beautiful  some 
of  the  Indian  baskets  were.  You  see,  the  Indians 
really  made  very  few  things  and  all  their  effort  and 
love  of  beauty  went  into  their  weapons,  their  canoes, 


ART  FOR  LITTLE  FOLKS  119 

their  dress,  their  pottery,  and  their  baskets.  After 
a  while,  I  shall  tell  you  about  the  beautiful  blankets 
they  made  to  wear,  but  just  now  we  want  to  know 
how  they  wove  these  baskets,  what  they  wove  them 
of,  and  how  they  shaped  and  decorated  them. 

Would  you  like  to  hear  a  story  about  an  Indian 
girl  and  her  mother  who  were  famous  for  making 
the  most  beautiful  baskets  of  any  women  in  their 
whole  tribe?  You  know  in  those  days  there  were 
many  tribes  of  Indians  scattered  all  over  America 
from  the  Atlantic  on  the  east  to  the  great  rolling 
Pacific  Ocean  on  the  west.  This  basket  weaver 
and  her  daughter  lived  in  the  far,  far  West  at  the 
foot  of  the  Cascade  Mountains.  One  evening  they 
sat  in  their  wigwam  sorting  out  the  roots  and  grasses 
they  had  gathered  that  day  in  the  mountains.  A 
veil  of  purple  mist  had  settled  over  the  valley  and 
there  was  a  chill  in  the  air,  but  they  kept  the  fire 
burning  brightly  and  they  were  warm  and  cozy. 
All  summer  long  they  had  gathered  grasses  and 
roots  and  twigs  for  their  baskets.  Sometimes  they 
climbed  to  the  snow  line  of  a  high  mountain ;  some- 
times they  worked  for  hours  digging  in  the  sand  so 
as  not  to  injure  the  delicate  roots  they  needed  for 
the  design  on  some  particular  basket.  And  now  they 
were  sorting  out  the  glossy  mountain  grass  of  which 
the  baskets  were  woven,  from  the  maidenhair  fern 
with  its  black  stem  out  of  which  they  made  the 
lovely  dark  borders  and  patterns.  They  were  split- 
ting the  willow  and  red  bud  twigs  into  fine  strands 
to  make  the  baskets  strong.  And  they  were  putting 


120  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

the  tough  grasses  and  twigs  to  soak  to  make  them 
clean  and  pliable.  Some  they  were  even  dyeing  red 
and  brown  with  berry  juices.  And  they  had  feathers, 
also,  which  they  had  picked  up  and  which  the  young 
chiefs  had  brought  them  —  dozens  and  dozens  of 
black  quail  feathers,  and  yellow  hammer  feathers, 
too,  bright  as  the  gold  of  the  sunlight  in  the  morning 
when  it  first  falls  on  the  leaves  and  makes  them  look 
as  though  King  Midas  had  touched  them  with  his 
magic  fingers. 

All  around  the  wigwam  where  they  were  working, 
were  the  most  beautiful  baskets  in  the  world,  much 
prettier  than  any  we  can  buy  to-day  at  the  stores. 
Because  this  was  a  long,  long  time  ago,  and  the 
Indians  to-day  have  almost  forgotten  how  to  make 
these  lovely  things.  There  were  the  big  basket 
bowls  and  little  basket  bowls  and  baskets  like  jars 
and  great  baskets  shaped  like  a  cone  which  they  used 
for  carrying  things  in  and  which  were  so  light  that 
you  could  scarcely  feel  them  if  they  were  hung  from 
your  shoulders  against  your  back,  the  way  the 
Indians  carried  them.  The  baskets  were  almost 
all  creamy  white,  but  oh,  such  wonderful  patterns 
as  they  had  woven  on  them  in  black  and  brown  and 
orange  and  red! 

If  you  were  making  something  very  pretty  like  a 
white  grass  basket  and  wanted  to  decorate  it,  what 
would  you  do  ?  I  suppose  you  would  draw  a  pic- 
ture of  the  prettiest  thing  you  could  think  of  and 
then  try  to  copy  it  on  the  basket  with  colored 
grasses.  Only  sometimes  the  copy  you  wove  out 


121 

of  the  grasses  would  look  a  little  queer  and 
square  because  you  just  can't  make  a  curved  pat- 
tern by  weaving.  Try  it  to  see  if  you  can  make  a 
real,  round  circle  the  next  time  you  weave  a  mat  out 
of  paper  or  make  a  rag  rug.  Now  you  remember  we 
said  that  the  Indians  lived  out  of  doors  by  hunting 
and  fishing  in  the  mountains.  What  do  you  suppose 
they  would  want  to  make  pictures  of  on  their  bas- 
kets? The  birds  and  the  animals  and  the  fishes; 
the  arrows  they  shot  with ;  the  mountains  and  trees ; 
the  flowing  streams  of  water  in  which  they  caught 
the  fish ;  and  sometimes  even  the  lightning  of  which 
they  were  so  afraid  when  it  came  flashing  down  from 
the  mountains  and  striking  the  tall  pine  trees  in  the 
valleys.  Only  the  basket  weavers  wouldn't  draw 
pictures.  They  would  just  think  them  in  their 
heads  and  then  try  to  weave  them  in  the  baskets. 
And  the  pictures  would  look  sometimes  a  little 
queer  and  square  and  stiff  when  they  were  done 
because  that's  the  way  you  have  to  make  patterns 
when  you  weave  with  grass.  You  try  to  make  a 
raffia  basket  and  see. 

Here  are  some  pictures  of  baskets  like  those  the 
Indian  basket  maker  and  her  daughter  had  in  their 
wigwam.  Do  you  see  the  wavy  streams  of  water 
all  flowing  down  to  the  lake  in  the  middle  of  the 
first  ?  Here  is  one  with  a  beautiful  border  just  like 
the  black  and  brown  diamond  pattern  on  the  back 
of  a  rattlesnake.  Here  is  another  dotted  all  over 
with  arrow  heads.  And  here  is  one  I  like  almost 
the  best  of  all  with  a  border  of  mountains  reflected 


122  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

in  the  water  of  a  lake  around  the  top.  Some  of 
the  patterns  tell  whole  -stories  too  — 

But  here  I  have  got  so  interested  talking  about 
baskets  that  I  have  forgotten  about  what  the  Indian 
mother  and  her  little  girl  are  doing.  ...  At  this 
point  should  follow  a  lively  Indian  legend,  a  real 
story,  which  will  account  in  some  incidental  way 
for  the  making  of  a  sun  basket  as  a  peace  offering 
to  the  gods  and  show  how  baskets  were  used  in 
religious  worship. 

Persian  rugs,  Japanese  and  Chinese  screens, 
Greek  pottery,  medieval  tapestry,  stained  glass  win- 
dows, a  dozen  other  similar  subjects  readily  suggest 
themselves  as  points  of  entry  into  social  history  and 
the  problems  of  industrial  design,  problems  which 
will  be  fascinating  to  the  children  because  they  can 
be  made  to  appeal  to  the  play  instinct,  and  which 
will  arise  quite  naturally  in  the  course  of  history, 
reading,  and  story-telling. 

But  industrial  and  decorative  design  are  not  the 
only  social  resources  of  the  art  instructor.  Portrait 
painting  and  sculpture,  the  genre  pictures  of  the 
Dutch,  French,  and  English  artists,  the  work  of  the 
great  landscape  artists,  and  last  but  almost  most 
important,  the  great  architectural  movements  of 
the  ages  —  here  is  material  which  will  at  once  foster 
a  taste  for  beauty ;  give  an  understanding  of  artistic 
development  and  the  relation  of  art  to  life ;  and  pic- 
ture for  the  growing  child  the  social  customs  and 
the  architectural  and  natural  background  of  life  in 
its  progressive  stages. 


VII 
GENERAL  SCIENCE 

IN  the  old  days  a  gentleman's  education  was 
encyclopedic.  He  studied  not  physics  but  science; 
not  arithmetic  but  mathematics;  not  English  but 
literature.  Of  course  he  did  not  cover  thoroughly 
this  wider  range ;  his  knowledge  was  amateurish 
and  smattering.  But  he  had  a  contact  with  many 
fields  of  human  activity,  and  information  varied 
though  not  profound  about  many  things  of  perennial 
human  interest.  Now  general  courses  have  gone 
out  of  date.  Our  high  school  student  looks  in  vain 
through  the  schedule  for  the  old  half  year  of  science 
in  which  everything  was  touched  upon  from  moons  to 
microbes.  He  finds  that  he  must  choose :  physiol- 
ogy* psychology,  geology,  physiography,  biology, 
botany,  physics,  chemistry,  or  astronomy  —  any  one 
will  absorb  a  year  of  his  precious  time,  and  if  he 
wishes  to  know  about  electricity,  he  must  resign, 
however  reluctantly,  his  chance  at  Mars.  This 
is  proper  and  no  cause  for  complaint  from  critics 
of  curricula.  But  is  there  no  place  in  education  for 
the  old  encyclopedic,  fascinating,  tinkering  general 
science?  No  place  to  satisfy  without  specialization 
the  darting,  miscellaneous,  eager  curiosity  of  the 

123 


124  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

growing  youngster  about  the  world?  No  place  to 
awaken  scientific  interest  and  point  out  the  radiating 
avenues  of  special  study  ?  What  of  the  grade  school 
curriculum  ?  What  science  work  do  we  offer  to  the 
student  in  our  common  schools  ? 

The  alert  elementary  school  teacher  conducts  an 
all-year-round  laboratory  and  lecture  course  in  gen- 
eral science.  Her  pupils  are  continually  bringing 
her  a  flower,  a  beetle,  an  old  bird's  nest,  a  leaf, 
or  an  acorn  for  identification.  They  are  forever 
asking  "why?"  about  this  or  that  common  natural 
phenomenon.  But  apart  from  the  hygiene  and 
nature  study  which  now  form  a  part  of  many  state 
courses  of  instruction,  this  general  science  work  is 
carried  on  quite  hit  or  miss,  without  definite  plan- 
ning, without  apparatus,  and  without  specific  train- 
ing on  the  part  of  the  teacher.  Can  nothing  be 
done  to  systematize  science  in  the  grades,  to  widen 
its  scope,  and  to  assist  the  teacher  in  its  presenta- 
tion, while  preserving  at  the  same  time  the  spon- 
taneity which  its  present  impromptu  character  in- 
sures ? 

So  many  necessary  social  habits,  such  as  sanitation 
and  conservation,  imply  as  their  basis  the  scientific 
attitude,  and  so  many  industrial  tasks  are  scientific 
in  their  character  that  to  impart  to  the  multitude 
of  persons  who  never  pass  beyond  the  grammar 
school  some  inklings  as  to  physical,  chemical,  and 
biologic  processes  would  be  a  long  step  toward 
community  efficiency.  And  there  is  no  time  at 
which  the  child  is  more  curious  to  understand  how 


GENERAL  SCIENCE  125 

things  are  made  and  how  they  "go"  than  the  gram- 
mar school  age;  no  time  when  he  is  more  eager  to 
do  things  himself  for  the  mere  joy  of  trying  them 
out.  In  a  rough  and  fumbling  way,  the  grade 
school  child  is  an  ideal  laboratory  worker.  It  re- 
mains for  the  liberal  board  of  education  and  the 
progressive  teacher  to  provide  equipment  and  plan 
a  course  of  study. 

As  little  folks  tire  quickly  at  prolonged  and  con- 
centrated effort,  care  must  be  taken  in  selecting  the 
material  for  such  a  course.  Sustained  microscopic 
work  is  impossible  (though  the  microscope  is  an 
invaluable  grade  school  resource)  and  hence  the 
finer  detailed  sorts  of  botany  are  quite  impossible. 
But  a  descriptive  field  study  of  trees  and  plants  and 
flowers  with  their  life  history  and  uses  has  been 
proved  entirely  feasible,  and  the  elements  of  biology 
invite  similar  exploration.  Bird  lore  and  the  habits 
of  domestic  animals  have  already  received  consid- 
erable attention,  but  much  more  can  be  done  along 
the  lines  of  their  uses  and  services,  their  proper 
care,  and  what  the  small  hero  of  a  new  Wells  novel 
calls  "the  insides  of  animals."  For  I  know  nothing 
which  so  impresses  one  with  the  mystery  and  value 
of  life  as  the  intricate  beautiful  physical  organism  of 
the  lowest  of  created  things. 

Nor  need  we  stop  with  so-called  nature  studies, 
for  are  physics  and  chemistry  entirely  beyond  the 
upper  grade  school  child?  The  public  grammar 
schools  of  France  employ  a  science  text  in  which 
such  matters  of  common  intelligence  as  the  composi- 


126  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

tion  of  air  and  water  and  the  fundamental  facts  of 
mechanics,  heat,  light,  electricity,  and  sound  are  all 
set  forth  in  simple  terms  and  illustrated  by  simple 
experiments  the  children  can  quite  well  perform. 
While  this  matter  is  presented  not  as  illustrative  of 
scientific  principles  but  merely  as  interesting  facts, 
still  it  gives  the  pupil  an  idea  of  the  wonder  of 
common  things  and  their  control  by  ascertainable 
laws.  It  explains  the  ordinary  phenomena  of  life, 
prepares  the  mind  for  an  intelligent  observance  of 
social  and  sanitary  codes,  and  often  stimulates  to 
later  independent  study.  In  our  own  rural  schools, 
the  new  teaching  of  agriculture  is  a  long  stride  in 
the  same  direction,  for  although  the  work  is  neces- 
sarily limited  and  specialized,  it  proves  the  feasibility 
of  a  kind  of  scientific  study  which  we  had  not  deemed 
possible  in  grade  school  classes.  Astronomy,  too, 
holds  wonderful  material  for  the  elementary  teacher 
and  the  time  will  come  when  no  common  school  will 
be  without  its  telescope  and  no  instructor  will  be 
ignorant  of  its  use  or  of  the  interesting  facts  which 
her  children  can,  through  it,  discover. 

In  all  this  work,  the  great  contribution  of  the 
elementary  school  teacher  to  science  will  be  to  train 
her  pupils  always  to  ask  "  why  ?"  She  has  not  done 
so  heretofore  because  too  often  she  herself  did  not 
know  enough  about  science  to  answer  questions, 
because  there  was  no  time  in  the  curriculum  for 
miscellaneous  scientific  study,  and  because  neither 
texts  nor  apparatus  were  provided  in  the  grades 
to  satisfy  such  curiosity  when  once  aroused.  But 


GENERAL  SCIENCE  127 

elementary  teachers  will  henceforth  be  better  trained 
in  general  science,  textbooks  will  be  written,  simple 
laboratory  apparatus  will  be  provided  by  up-to-date 
boards  of  education,  and  grade  school  pupils,  too,  will 
at  length  hear  at  least  the  opening  chapters  of  those 
"fairytales  of  science"  which  make  secondary  edu- 
cation to-day  so  much  more  vital  to  our  red-blooded 
boys  and  girls. 


VIII 
MANUAL  TRAINING 

AT  the  close  of  the  War,  we  shall  be  confronted 
by  the  question  of  the  future  military  training  of 
American  youth.  Agitation  for  making  the  present 
war  training  permanent  is  already  under  way,  and 
the  practical  American  mind  is  likely  to  find  in  the 
already  erected  and  costly  cantonments  the  most 
conclusive  argument  for  its  perpetuation.  Univer- 
sal training  of  both  sexes  for  national  service,  for 
subordination  of  self  to  the  common  cause,  is  indeed 
a  prime  requisite  for  American  national  strength. 
But  thinking  Americans  will  not  wish  this  training 
to  be  merely  military,  necessary  as  defensive  prepar- 
ation now  seems  to  be.  We  shall  not  wish  our  youth, 
caught  at  the  imaginative,  formative  period,  to  be 
run  through  a  mere  army  mill;  governed,  as  all  ef- 
fective armies  must  be,  autocratically  from  above; 
and  producing  martial  technique  and  the  habit  of 
obedience  as  its  highest  fruits.  The  blind  allegiance 
of  the  German  people  to  their  leaders  in  an  undem- 
ocratic war  has  given  us  a  conclusive  demonstration 
of  the  evil  results  of  such  a  national  discipline. 
We  in  America  shall  be  careful  to  select  a  type  of 
training  which  will  not  contradict  by  its  very  nature 

128 


MANUAL  TRAINING  129 

the  American  principles  which  it  is  destined  to 
protect.  We  shall  wish  it  to  reflect  and  prepare  for 
the  realization  of  American  ideals;  we  shall  wish  it 
to  be  democratic,  self-disciplinary,  and  cooperative 
rather  than  rigidly  officered ;  and  we  shall  wish  to 
see  it  creative  as  well  as  defensive,  directed  toward 
peace  time  service  in  perfecting  our  democracy  as 
well  as  war  time  sacrifice  for  its  protection.  The 
thrilling  idealism  and  spirit  of  self -consecration  which 
stirs  America  to-day  must  not  be  left  to  evaporate 
at  the  close  of  the  War,  but  must  be  crystallized  into 
some  institution  for  universal  training  in  national 
service  which  will  perpetuate  this  war-inspired  fervor 
and  direct  it  into  constructive  social  channels. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  engineering  branch  of  the 
old  army  points  the  way  to  the  new  universal  train- 
ing of  the  future  —  the  construction  division  which 
drained  the  district  of  Panama;  stamped  out  the 
plague  in  Cuba  and  the  Philippines ;  laid  the  roads 
and  built  the  bridges  which  have  opened  up  those 
islands  to  the  contact  of  civilization ;  and  constructed 
vast  irrigation  and  engineering  enterprises  in  our 
own  Southwest.  Think  of  American  youths  of 
both  sexes  mobilized  for  a  year  or  more  during  that 
impressionable  period  when  academic  education  is 
completed,  and  the  problems  of  adult  life  have  not 
yet  begun ;  subjected  to  wholesome  and  orderly  camp 
discipline;  strengthened  by  physical  training  and 
life  in  the  open;  and  turning  their  energies  into 
constructive  enterprises  cooperatively  performed 
for  the  national  good!  Reclamation  of  uncultivat- 


130  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

able  land,  forest  patrol,  reforestation,  game  and  fish 
protection,  road  building ;  task  after  task  suggests 
itself  as  the  core  about  which  such  vital  training 
could  be  built,  training  which  would  harden  the 
physique,  stamp  the  young  mind  with  a  sense  of 
national  and  social  responsibility,  and  train  it  to 
group  action,  obedience,  and  cooperation.  Nor 
would  definite  military  training  be  neglected,  but 
in  such  a  scheme  of  national  education,  this  military 
instruction  would  be  a  means  and  not  an  end,  a 
vital  though  subordinate  part  of  a  larger  plan  for 
national  well-being. 

It  is  idle  at  this  point  to  prophesy  just  what  form 
such  training  will  assume,  but  whatever  the  final 
program,  it  is  certain  that  no  subject  in  the  secondary 
and  elementary  schools  can  so  surely  lead  up  to  it 
in  method  and  ideals  as  properly  directed  manual 
training.  No  subject  so  easily  lends  itself  to  social 
manipulation  as  the  ordinary  handwork  for  boys  and 
girls  in  our  lower  schools.  No  subject  can  be  so 
naturally  and  properly  used  to  develop  a  whole- 
some sense  of  social  responsibility  and  a  love  of 
social  service ;  yet  no  subject  has  been  on  the  whole 
so  individualistic  in  its  methods  and  results.  Even 
the  recitation,  which,  under  the  worst  circumstances, 
still  in  other  courses  remains  a  group  effort,  is  in 
the  manual  training  class  broken  up  into  individual 
work  at  an  individual  desk  with  individual  tools  on 
objects  usually  designed  for  individual  use.  Indeed 
the  incentive  of  making  things  for  one's  self,  one's 
family,  or  one's  friends  has  been  largely  responsible 


MANUAL  TRAINING  181 

for  the  superior  liveliness  of  interest  in  manual 
training  subjects.  Yet  manual  training  offers  to 
the  inspired  school  director  the  most  natural  means 
of  getting  children  to  think  and  work  for  others.  It 
is  a  kindergarten  maxim  that  no  most  trifling  object 
the  children  make  shall  be  retained  for  their  own 
use,  but  that  each  thing  shall  be  constructed  as  a 
gift.  In  starting  each  piece  of  handiwork,  the 
kindergarten  teacher  asks,  "Should  you  not  like  to 
make  a  pretty  basket  like  this  for  Mother  ?  "  Slowly, 
surely,  the  motive  of  service  is  thus  awakened. 
But  in  the  upper  grades  and  the  high  school,  little 
is  done  to  carry  on  this  social  training.  This  seems 
an  unnecessary  pedagogic  waste.  Children  are  so 
absorbed  in  the  mere  constructive  activity  involved 
in  manual  work  (especially  when  it  is  imitative  of 
that  of  adults  and  forms  a  sort  of  life  play)  that  the 
added  incentive  of  personal  ownership  is  rarely 
needed  to  hold  their  interest.  Here  is  the  teacher's 
chance  to  attach  to  their  delight  in  doing,  the  added 
delight  of  doing  for  a  practical  end  and  the  social 
discipline  of  doing  for  others. 

Some  teachers  and  some  whole  school  systems  have 
already  based  their  manual  training  on  these  prin- 
ciples, and  the  Junior  Red  Cross  movement  with 
its  turning  over  of  handwork  periods  to  the  making 
of  hospital  and  army  supplies  and  relief  garments, 
blazes  the  trail  for  a  permanent  reorganization  of 
our  handwork  to  embrace  this  valuable  opportunity. 
There  are  several  ways  in  which  manual  training 
has  been  given  a  social  direction  in  our  American 


132  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

public  schools.  First  there  is  the  teacher  who  en- 
courages his  pupils  to  construct  things  for  his  family. 
This  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes,  though  family  loyalty 
is  likely  to  be  only  a  larger  egoism,  and  something 
more  than  this  is  needed  to  awaken  a  sense  of  civic 
responsibility  in  our  coming  citizens.  Other  schools 
utilize  the  products  of  the  manual  training  classes 
in  equipping  their  own  buildings.  Students  of  car- 
pentry construct  tables,  desks,  and  chairs  for  library, 
laboratory  and  classroom,  or  even  build  additions 
to  the  school  plant.  The  pupils  in  iron  work  and 
engineering  courses  construct  tools  and  machinery 
for  the  school  shops  and  laboratories.  Cooking 
classes  operate  the  school  lunch  room,  and  sewing 
classes  make  gymnasium  suits,  graduation  dresses, 
and  costumes  for  the  plays  and  pageants  in  which 
the  school  takes  part.  Printing  classes  issue  the 
school  paper  and  print  programs  and  study  outlines. 
In  one  western  city1  the  process  is  carried  even 
further  and  students  in  practical  branches  of  the 
summer  school  work  for  the  whole  school  system; 
they  put  up,  glaze,  wire,  instal  plumbing  in,  and 
paint  new  school  buildings  and  construct  the  fix- 
tures and  movable  furniture  therein  required,  thus 
widening  the  area  of  their  activities  from  what  will 
be  of  immediate  practical  service  to  their  own  group 
to  those  things  which  serve  other  sections  of  the 
community  as  well.  All  these  methods  of  leading 
the  student  out  of  himself  and  introducing  him  to 

1  Kansas  City,  Missouri.     See  Bulletin   of  Federal  Board  for  Voca- 
tional Education,  No.  20. 


MANUAL  TRAINING  133 

group  problems  are  steps  toward  the  realization  of 
the  double  possibilities  of  manual  training  as  an  in- 
dividual and  a  social  discipline. 

But  much  remains  to  be  accomplished ;  and  espe- 
cially is  it  interesting  to  ask  what  will  replace  at  the 
close  of  the  War,  the  Red  Cross  work  which  has  so 
largely  occupied  domestic  science  classes  in  the 
last  two  years.  Teachers  will  be  reluctant  to  lose 
the  class  enthusiasm  and  the  training  in  service 
which  this  war  work  has  brought  into  the  school 
curriculum;  can  they  not  find  in  similar  local  needs 
the  answer  to  their  problem  ?  Even  as  the  War 
progressed,  the  necessity  for  civilian  relief  and  the 
possibility  of  using  sewing,  cooking,  and  carpentry 
classes  for  satisfying  this  need  grew  more  apparent. 
And  in  the  civic  and  social  reconstruction  which 
must  inevitably  follow  upon  the  War,  will  there  not 
be  a  hundred  local  problems  to  which  each  school 
could  turn  its  energies,  so  that  the  practical  work 
of  the  students  will  not  be  wasted  in  aimless  exer- 
cises or  absorbed  in  selfish  enterprises  for  their  own 
enjoyment,  but  will  be  directed  instead  into  channels 
that  develop  that  group  spirit,  that  disciplined  co- 
operation, and  that  sense  of  civic  social  responsi- 
bilities which  underlie  all  self-sacrificing  patriotism, 
all  sure  and  democratic  national  progress? 


IX 
SOCIAL  PLAY 

STUDY  and  work  are  a  preparation  for  living; 
play  is  life  itself.  As  a  type,  then,  of  that  for  which 
we  are  preparing  the  pupils  in  our  schools,  their 
play  needs  most  of  all  to  be  socialized.  The  play 
habits  which  we  give  them  in  their  growing  years 
will  stamp  and  character  forever  that  part  of  their 
later  life  which  is  wholly  self-directed,  that  part  for 
which,  humanly  and  individually,  the  rest  exists, 
that  part  in  which  they  are  truly  themselves.  Liter- 
ature, art,  song,  —  these  finest  manifestations,  these 
ripe  fruits  of  civilization,  in  which  we  taste  its  real 
significance,  are  but  play,  glorified,  spiritualized,  and 
crystallized.  At  the  bottom  of  a  nation's  art  lies 
the  nation's  play.  Only  nations  that  can  play 
create  great  art ;  art  in  which  a  people 

"  Pausing  a  moment  from  the  strife 
And  whirling  business  of  daily  life. 
For  but  a  moment  are  what  they  would  be ; " 

art  which  lifts  us  with  them  nearer  the  divine. 

And  how  well  have  we  Americans  learned  to  play  ? 
How  well  have  we  learned  to  play  together  —  as 
people  must  do  the  things  that  count  in  this  social 
world  ?  We  have  indeed  our  national  sports :  we 

134 


SOCIAL  PLAY  135 

have  our  school  and  college  athletics  with  their 
training  in  the  honesty  and  team  work  which  is  so 
necessary  for  individual,  political,  and  social  success 
in  a  democracy ;  we  have  our  big  baseball  games  with 
their  cheering  thousands  in  the  bleachers  catching 
the  infectious  spirit  of  group  sympathy;  we  have 
our  public  parks  and  tennis  courts  and  golf  links  and 
swimming  pools ;  we  have  our  commercial  recreations 
—  our  big  amusement  parks  where  hundreds  jostle 
each  other  sociably  in  holiday  mood,  our  theaters  and 
movies,  our  dance  halls  and  skating  rinks,  our  con- 
certs and  lectures.  Our  fun  is  good  and  wholesome 
and  energetic. 

But  as  a  people,  have  we  learned  to  play?  Has 
every  American  had  the  democratic  stimulus  of 
team  work  in  school  or  community  games  ?  Do  we 
all  play  daily,  freely,  spontaneously,  and  creatively ; 
or  does  our  so-called  play  take  the  form  of  mere 
exercise  to  keep  us  fit,  and  mere  watching  other 
people  work  for  a  living  in  theaters  and  concert 
halls?  And  does  our  play  when  we  do  ourselves 
creatively  engage  in  it,  express  physically  and  spir- 
itually, our  unattained  ideals,  the  fine,  free,  joyous 
impulses  that  flower  in  those  free  moments  when  we 
are  most  ourselves  —  or  is  it  a  sort  of  spiritual  and 
physical  sprawl,  a  sag  below  instead  of  a  leap  above 
the  level  of  our  working  life? 

However  these  questions  may  be  answered,  it  is 
the  great  opportunity  of  the  school  teacher,  especially 
of  the  school  teacher  in  the  grammar  grades,  to  de- 
velop the  play  spirit  among  his  pupils  and  to  direct 


136  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

it  into  socializing  channels.  It  used  to  be  thought 
that  any  one  could  play ;  now  we  know  that  we  must 
be  taught  to  play  just  as  we  are  taught  to  eat  or 
read  or  calculate;  that  is,  if  we  are  to  play  whole- 
somely and  well.  And  this  is  why  the  big  public 
schools  in  our  larger  cities  have  a  playground  teacher 
as  well  as  an  arithmetic  teacher;  and  this  is  why 
the  regular  instructors  in  smaller  towns  themselves 
supervise  the  play  in  the  school  yard  at  recess,  organ- 
ize games,  teams,  and  contests,  and  see  that  every 
child,  and  not  only  those  who  are  particularly  adept, 
has  a  chance  to  participate  therein.1  Gone  are  the 
days  when  teacher  grumblingly  turned  out  her 
wriggling  roomful  at  recess  and  then  remained 
"sulking  in  her  tent"  till  time  to  ring  the  bell  and 
drag  the  stragglers  in.  Teacher  now  follows  the 
class  to  the  playground,  romps  with  them  herself 
(getting  thus  deeper  under  their  skins  than  birch 
switch  ever  penetrated),  and  organizes  new  and  more 
fascinating  sports  when  blind  man's  buff  and  tag 
begin  to  pall. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  playground  games,  athletics, 
cave  digging,  bird  study,  gardening,  constructing 
school  improvements,  and  the  like  that  the  skillful 
teacher  organizes  and  directs  play  life.  There  are 
indoor  outlets  for  the  play  impulse,  for  nonutili- 
tarian  self-expression,  which  are  equally  valuable. 

1  Increasingly  urgent  criticism  comes  from  parents  that  emphasis 
on  interscholastic  athletics  is  resulting  in  overattention  to  pupils  who 
promise  to  represent  the  school  well  in  such  contests  at  the  expense  of 
the  less  adept  who  need  athletic  training  more. 


SOCIAL  PLAY  137 

Music,  for  instance.  There  is  nothing  so  certain  to 
weld  a  jarring  roomful  into  unity  as  group  singing. 
The  whole  crowd  shares  at  once  the  cooperative 
effort,  the  cooperative  product,  and  the  cooperative 
pleasure.  We  have  music  in  our  schools  and  music 
in  our  lives  to  be  sure ;  but  Americans  on  the  whole 
are  not  a  singing  people.  And  it  is  largely  because 
they  have  never  been  taught  to  sing.  In  our  new 
army  cantonments  where  directed  singing  has  been 
established  as  a  part  of  the  regular  routine,  music 
has  become  at  once  an  emotional  outlet  for  our 
soldiers  and  sailors,  and  a  great  patriotic  inspiration 
and  unifying  force.  So  should  it  be  in  every  social 
and  community  group.  But  we  are  tongue-tied  for 
lack  of  elementary  instruction  in  the  mechanics  of 
breathing  and  tone  placing ;  and  for  lack  of  knowl- 
edge of  what  to  sing.  In  the  old  times,  everyone 
had  at  least  a  stock  of  hymns  in  his  head,  the  solid 
bread  of  song  by  which  long  generations  had  been 
fed.  But  now  the  hymns  have  lapsed  with  the 
church-going  habit ;  nothing  has  come  to  take  their 
place ;  and  if  we  are  not  as  a  nation  to  lose  the  emo- 
tional safety-valve  of  music  and  the  fine  cooperative 
discipline  of  social  singing,  we  must  restock  our 
generations  with  music  in  the  public  school. 

But  what  shall  we  sing  and  how  ?  How  teach  the 
simple  mechanics  of  vocal  expression,  familiarize 
the  children  with  the  best  music  suited  to  their  age 
and  apprehension,  and  keep  the  play  spirit  which 
makes  singing  a  delightful  recreation?  What  to 
sing  presents  the  first  and  most  difficult  problem. 


1S8          SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

Unfortunately  hymns  are  taboo  in  the  public  school ; 
popular  ragtime  melodies  meet  with  little  pedagogic 
support  —  forgetful  as  we  often  are  that  their  in- 
sistent, obvious  rhythms  are  often  precisely  suited 
to  the  childish  appetite ;  our  patriotic  and  war  songs 
are  as  a  rule  good,  simple,  and  easy  for  children's 
voices  and  at  the  moment  of  this  writing  are  one  of 
the  strongest  forces  of  patriotic  education  in  American 
life;  but  among  classical  selections,  what  shall  we 
choose  for  our  little  folks  to  sing?  Tuneful  things, 
the  things  they  like  to  sing  and  will  keep  on  liking 
to  sing,  not  things  designed  as  musical  gymnastics. 
The  operatic  fever  has  run  its  course  in  music  texts, 
and  left  school  singing  all  too  often  dead  along  its 
path.  But  the  flood  is  receding,  and  the  simple, 
substantial,  average-ranged  pieces  have  come  into 
their  own  again;  the  intimate  songs  which  voice 
each  poignant  human  mood,  purify  it,  and  by  its 
expression,  free  us  from  its  tyranny.  Abide  With 
Me,  Annie  Laurie,  Flow  Gently  Sweet  A/ton,  Loch 
Lomond,  Mighty  Lok'  a  Rose,  My  Old  Kentucky 
Home,  Way  Down  Upon  the  Swanee  River,  Massa's 
in  the  Cold,  Cold  Groun',  The  Campbells  Are  Coming, 
Handel's  Largo,  Du  Bist  Wie  Eine  Blume,  Malbrook 
S'en  Va-t-en  Guerre,  Mandalay,  Juanita,  Sweet  and 
Low,  Hush-a-Bye  Baby,  Good  Night  Ladies,  Drink  to 
Me  Only  With  Thine  Eyes,  Old  Heidelberg,  The  Stein 
Song,  The  Midshipmite,  Stille  Nacht,  Paloma,  The 
Requiem,  and  a  host  of  other  unambitious  melodies 
within  the  compass  of  school  voices  and  ability 
suggest  themselves,  songs  which,  stored  in  the  mind 


SOCIAL  PLAY  139 

of  the  youthful  singer,  will  return  to  him  again  and 
yet  again  and  bear  interest  a  hundredfold  both  in 
social  gatherings  and  as  an  outlet  for  the  troubled 
heart  in  solitude.  Many  teachers  now  advocate 
not  only  the  singing  hour  but  the  Victrola  hour; 
this  too  has  its  distinct  advantages,  but  after  all,  it 
is  a  passive  affair,  not  to  be  compared  with  the  sim- 
plest singing  in  development  value.  For  a  roomful 
of  youngsters  brimming  with  life  and  energy  to 
join,  without  a  supporting  accompaniment,1  in  the 
singing  of  some  fine  old  part  song,  is  the  most  perfect 
representation  possible  in  school  activity  of  self- 
controlled,  self-directed,  cooperative  play  which  lifts 
man  above  the  limits  of  time  and  place  into  the  clear 
unclouded  region  of  his  dreams. 

Nor  is  music  valuable  merely  as  the  most  refining 
of  all  disciplines,  the  most  cogent  of  all  social  solvents, 
the  most  perfect  emancipator  of  the  human  soul. 
Through  music  as  through  literature,  we  widen  our 
knowledge  and  understanding  of  the  great  peoples 
beyond  our  borders  with  whom  we  are  so  soon  to 
embark  upon  the  great  adventure  of  a  federated, 
international  life.  The  pellucid  cadence  of  an  old 
French  ballad,  beautiful,  clear,  and  unillusioned ; 
the  sweet,  heart-piercing  melodies  of  Scotland; 
the  mystic  sadness  of  Scandinavian  folk  song;  the 
flashing  sword  and  sunshine  of  Italian  airs ;  the 
tragic  sentimentalism  of  German  music;  and  the 

1  The  test  of  good  group  singing  is  without  the  piano.  This  trains 
the  ear  and  disciplines  attention.  The  group  which  sings  without  an 
accompaniment  does  not  follow  the  piano;  it  keeps  together. 


140  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

strange,  uneasy,  fateful,  somber  power  of  Russian 
harmonies  —  what  are  these  but  the  great  emotional 
highway  into  national  character?  The  child  who 
has  sung  the  world's  music  is  already  in  his  heart  the 
brother  of  all  peoples. 

Dramatics  is  the  second  indoor  type  of  play  which 
brims  with  social  possibilities.  All  children's  play 
is  instinctively  dramatic,  but  in  composing  from  life 
a  dramatic  episode  for  school  presentation,  in  the 
dramatization  of  some  incident  in  history  or  fiction, 
or  in  the  mere  presentation  of  an  already  existing 
drama,  this  basic  instinct  is  elevated  above  the 
merely  accidental  and  becomes  conscious  and  self- 
controlled.1  The  value  for  self -discipline  of  taking 
part  in  a  dramatic  entertainment  needs  no  explana- 
tion ;  but  the  value  of  dramatics  as  a  training  for 
community  play  is  just  beginning  to  be  recognized. 
Charity  dramatics  and  local  pageants  —  historical, 
patriotic,  or  social  —  are  paving  the  way  to  the 
community  theater,  or  at  any  rate  to  an  era  of 
civic  recreation  heretofore  undreamed  of,  which  will 
express  in  living  forms  our  national  purposes  and 
weld  together  as  never  before  our  national  life.  We 
have  neglected  the  element  of  symbol  and  ritual  in 
our  public  life ;  but  the  history  of  civilization  teaches 
us  that  it  is  through  ritual  and  dramatic  represen- 
tation that  ideas  become  warm  and  vital  to  the 

1  The  puppet  show,  with  its  added  problems  of  constructing  the  stage, 
the  puppets,  and  their  costumes,  is  also  invaluable  both  as  a  dramatic 
exercise  and  a  motivation  for  manual  training.  See  Gesell,  The  Normal 
Child  and  Primary  Edwation,  Chapter  X. 


SOCIAL  PLAY  141 

popular  mind.  Through  community  drama  and 
pageantry  more  surely  than  in  any  other  way  can 
these  moral  and  ethical  ideals  of  public  and  private 
conduct  for  which  America  must  stand  be  blended 
inseparably  with  our  national  consciousness,  and 
the  word  American  become  synonymous  with  all  the 
splendid  qualities  toward  which  we  strive;  while 
to  be  unjust,  unchaste,  intemperate,  unforgiving, 
cruel,  and  undemocratic  comes  to  be  covered  in  the 
instinctive  speech  of  every  loyal  citizen  by  the  one 
term  of  un-American.1  From  intelligently  con- 
ducted school  dramatics,  it  is  but  a  step  for  the 
child  into  the  wider  field  of  dramatizing  public  life 
and  national  ideals;  and  the  grade  school  teacher 
who  has  given  her  pupils  dramatic  experience  and 
interest  in  dramatizing  and  poetizing  the  vital  issues 
of  the  passing  hour,  has  not  only  trained  them  in 
group  activity  and  awakened  in  them  a  taste  for 
the  higher,  more  educative  forms  of  recreation,  but 
has  prepared  them  for  sharing  in  the  cooperative 
moral  and  artistic  life  of  the  future  American  com- 
munity. 

The  alert  instructor,  however,  will  utilize  not 
merely  those  interests  closely  bound  up  with  the 
school  program ;  she  will  initiate  and  promote  extra- 
academic  activities,  like  the  Boy  Scout,  Girl  Scout, 
and  Camp  Fire  work,  which  not  only  embody  group 
action,  discipline,  service,  and  fun;  bring  teacher 

1  A  naive  and  delightful  example  of  qualitative  patriotism  is  to  be 
found  in  Planchet,  the  lackey,  in  The  Three  Musketeers.  "Be  satisfied, 
sir ;  I  am  brave  when  I  set  about  it ;  besides,  I  am  a  Picard." 


142  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

and  pupil  together  on  a  purely  human  basis;  and 
increase  our  familiarity  with  the  natural  world; 
but  which  stimulate  rugged  physical  development. 
That  the  American  nation  has  abused  its  splendid 
pioneer  heritage  of  health  and  grown  flabby  and 
soft  from  indoor,  sedentary  life,  is  proved  by  the 
rejection  of  so  large  a  proportion  of  our  drafted  men 
as  unfit  for  military  service,  and  by  the  grueling 
drill  which  was  necessary  to  harden  even  those  recruits 
who  were  free  from  serious  physical  defects.  We 
have  taught  physiology  and  hygiene  in  every  Ameri- 
can school  district.  But  too  often  we  have  neglected 
to  follow  these  rules  into  the  pupil's  action  and  give 
him  the  emotional  incentive  necessary  for  their 
observation,  the  actual  liking  for  a  vigorous,  health- 
ful way  of  life.  Real  toughening,  hardening,  and 
physical  ruggedness  come  not  from  school  calisthen- 
ics and  gymnasium  drill  (necessary  as  these  are  for 
corrective,  symmetrical  development),  but  from  days 
and  nights  in  the  open,  full  of  purposeful,  strenuous 
activity.  Athletics,  valuable  as  they  are,  have 
this  inevitable  limitation :  they  are  specialized  types 
of  training  and  not  a  comprehensive  mode  of  life. 
But  Boy  Scout,  Girl  Scout,  and  Camp  Fire  activi- 
ties furnish  a  foundation  upon  which  can  be  built 
up  the  pupil's  whole  idea  of  a  useful,  healthful,  and 
happy  life.  Cooperation  with  one's  fellows,  social 
service,  knowledge  of  the  natural  world,  sane  notions 
as  to  food,  sleep,  and  clothing,  the  joy  of  exercise 
taken  not  for  itself  alone  but  as  an  incidental  and 
integral  part  of  an  interesting  and  active  existence 


SOCIAL  PLAY  143 

—  all  are  woven  together  in  Scout  and  Camp  Fire 
ritual  so  as  to  leave  an  indelible  mark  upon  the  life 
tastes  of  the  growing  boy  and  girl,  and  to  stamp 
forever  upon  their  minds  as  living  principles  those 
rules  of  ethics  and  hygiene  which  a  dozen  textbook 
courses  will  fail  to  teach.  The  true  Boy  Scout  does 
not  open  his  bedroom  window  because  he  knows 
oxygen  to  be  necessary  to  his  physical  well-being; 
he  is  simply  stifled  in  an  air-tight  room.  The  Camp 
Fire  girl  eschews  tight  shoes  and  corsets  because  she 
feels  caged  in  them,  not  because  she  knows  them  to 
be  physically  injurious.  Knowledge  is  indeed  the 
guide  post  to  proper  living;  but  it  is  taste  or  liking 
that  will  take  us  up  the  road. 

Nor  does  the  vitalizing  of  education  by  such  extra- 
academic  activities  end  with  this  energizing  of  edu- 
cational ideas ;  the  contact  of  teacher  and  pupil 
becomes  far  more  vital  when  all  share  together 
the  routine  of  Scout  and  Camp  Fire  life.  The  rela- 
tion becomes  human  rather  than  official;  the  boy 
or  girl,  as  well  as  the  teacher,  shows  himself  as  he 
really  is.  The  teacher  watches  his  pupils'  personal 
development  and  shapes  instruction  much  more 
accurately  to  their  needs.  The  pupil  carries  over 
into  classroom  work  the  frank  give  and  take  of  camp 
relationship,  with  a  gain  in  soundness  of  prog- 
ress which  far  offsets  any  fancied  loss  in  formal 
classroom  etiquette.  No  real  teacher  who  cares 
for  the  vitality  of  his  work  and  for  reality  in  his 
relations  with  his  pupils  can  afford  to  neglect  the 
chance  of  sharing  in  their  play  which  such  activi- 


144  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

ties  as  Boy  Scout,  Girl  Scout,  and  Camp  Fire 
work  afford.1 

The  interest  of  the  genuine  teacher  in  his  pupils 
will  not  cease  with  the  school  term,  but  he  will  care 
to  see  that  the  summer  months  of  his  children  are 
provided  for  in  a  way  best  to  further  their  develop- 
ment. For  this  purpose,  what  is  so  valuable  as 
the  summer  camp  in  which  children  are  brought 
into  prolonged  contact  with  nature,  and  in  which 
the  great  law  that  Services  and  Rights  are  equal 
can  be  illustrated  not  only  for  social  life  by  cooper- 
ative camp  activities,  but  also  for  our  relation  to 
the  physical  world,  by  scientific  study  of  the  uses  and 
services  of  the  trees,  plants,  animals,  reptiles,  and 
insects  in  the  fields  and  woods  about  the  camp? 
Camps  of  varying  degrees  of  success  in  imparting 
humane  education  are  being  conducted  by  various 
private  organizations  in  many  progressive  com- 
munities ;  and  the  alert  teacher  will  cooperate  with 
such  agencies  in  the  placement  of  pupils  most  in 
need  of  outings,  or  promote  the  establishment  of 
such  summer  camps  where  none  are  already  in 
operation.2 

But  the  school  can  reach  out  not  only  into  the 
life  of  its  children  and  play  vitally  upon  their  leisure 

1  For  directions  as  to  organization  and  group  work  in  these  associa- 
tions, write  to  Boy  Scout  Headquarters,  200  Fifth  Ave.,  N.  Y.  C. ;  Girl 
Scout  Headquarters,  527  Fifth  Avenue,  N.  Y.  C.;   Camp  Fire  Head- 
quarters, 31  East  17th  Street,  N.  Y.  C. 

2  For  a  detailed  account  of  the  conduct  of  such  a  camp,  write  for  the 
1919  report  of  the  Kansas  City  Humane  Society,  City  Hall,  Kansas 
City,  Mo. 


SOCIAL  PLAY  145 

hours ;  it  can  mold  with  equal  educative  force  the 
family  and  civic  life  of  its  community.  All  this 
time,  we  have  been  speaking  of  the  school  merely  as 
a  place  for  the  education  of  children.  But  it  may  be 
far,  far  more  than  this.  What  we  have  long  needed 
in  America  is  a  democratic  social  rallying  point. 
War  work  has  given  us  for  the  time  being  a  great 
bond  of  social  union  and  a  natural  meeting  place 
in  surgical  dressings  stations  and  the  like.  But 
after  the  War,  upon  what  permanent  peg  can  we 
hang  our  cooperative  social  life?  The  school  is 
the  obvious  meeting  ground  where  every  family  can 
find  a  perennial  common  interest;  it  is  the  center 
upon  which  the  collective  life  of  the  school  district 
converges,  and  from  which  community  life  most 
naturally  can  radiate.  It  is  axiomatic  in  these 
days  that  the  school  building,  owned  by  the  public 
and  all  too  often  idle  and  empty  during  the  afternoon 
arid  evening,  is  the  logical  and  economic  place  for 
community  centers  either  for  discussion,  study,  or 
recreation.  But  how  to  turn  the  school  into  a  real 
community  force,  reaching  parents  as  well  as 
children,  and  directing  the  life  currents  of  the 
neighborhood  into  wholesome  civic  channels,  is  a 
problem  which  puzzles  the  timid,  and  often  unpre- 
pared, instructor.  It  is  easy  enough  to  get  the 
parents  to  come  to  the  school ;  they  all  have  chil- 
dren there.  But  what  to  do  with  them  when  they 
have  arrived,  how  to  transform  their  common  in- 
terest in  their  own  children  into  cooperative  social 
service  to  the  community  —  that  is  the  problem. 


146  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

Perhaps  the  story  of  one  rural  school  will  prove 
an  inspiration.1 

Five  years  ago  the  Porter  Schoolhouse  in  Adair 
County,  Missouri,  was  as  cheerless  and  dilapidated 
as  the  rural  neighborhood  whose  children  played 
truant  from  its  classes  and  grew  up  to  seek  their  for- 
tunes in  the  distant  city,  instead  of  developing  the 
really  rich  resources  of  its  neglected  farms.  To-day  a 
model,  furnace-heated  building,  simply  but  attrac- 
tively finished  ;  with  a  well-lighted  basement  equipped 
with  cooking  apparatus,  folding  chairs,  and  tables 
for  community  dinners ;  and  furnished  with  study 
tables  and  chairs  instead  of  fixed  desks,  and  a  tele- 
phone, typewriter,  piano,  magazine  rack,  and  the 
latest  periodicals  and  books  on  agriculture,  has  re- 
placed the  old  tumbledown  structure.  Beside  it 
stands  a  charming  cottage  in  which  the  Porter  teachers 
live,  and  across  the  way  is  an  old  tenant  house  trans- 
formed into  the  Porter  District  Rural  High  School. 

How  and  by  whom  were  these  buildings  raised 
and  furnished?  By  the  cooperative  effort  of  the 
farmers  in  Porter  township,  stimulated  by  a 
woman  with  imagination  who  saw  the  chance 
to  transform  a  decaying  district  into  a  progressive 
community  through  the  medium  of  the  school  as  a 
rallying  point  and  social  center.  Once  begun,  the 
cooperative  effort  of  the  Porter  people  did  not  stop 
with  the  erection  of  a  model  building.  Working 

1  See  Rallying  Round  a  School  by  Alice  Mary  Kimball  in  the  Country 
Gentleman  for  January  19  and  January  26, 1918 ;  two  stimulating  and  sug- 
gestive articles  on  the  work  of  Mrs.  Harvey  in  the  Porter  Rural  School. 


SOCIAL  PLAY  147 

together  proved  a  profitable  pleasure  and  now  the 
neighborhood  not  only  buys  and  sells  cooperatively ; 
it  conducts  a  yearly  agricultural  extension  course 
and  experiment  station,  which  has  improved  agri- 
cultural methods  in  the  district  so  much  that  land 
in  Porter  township  has  more  than  doubled  its  market 
value.  A  whole  series  of  recreational  and  business 
enterprises  have  grown  up  around  the  school,  infus- 
ing new  joy  and  interest  into  isolated  lives  and 
stimulating  new  and  undreamed-of  prosperity  and 
progress.  The  Porter  Band  rehearses  at  the  school- 
house  Saturday  night  and  the  neighborhood  drops 
in  to  hear  the  music  and  see  the  young  folks  having 
a  good  time.  The  Porter  Poultry  Club  and  CoSper- 
ative  Canning  Club  center  in  the  school  and  em- 
brace grown-ups  and  children  in  their  activities. 
The  Porter  Farm  Woman's  Club  has  pulled  the  lonely 
country  woman  out  of  her  mental  rut,  and  the  non- 
sectarian  Sunday  School  is  reconciling  religious 
differences  and  getting  the  neighborhood  together 
on  moral  as  well  as  business  issues.  And  what  of 
the  Porter  young  people  who  in  the  last  generation 
left  Adair  County  for  the  city,  and  better  fortune? 
They  are  going  from  the  Porter  District  High  School 
to  the  Kirksville  Normal  School  and  the  State 
University,  and  coming  back  to  Porter  and  the  land 
to  make  the  district  grow.  And  all  this  is  the  trans- 
forming work  of  one  woman  with  social  vision  in 
one  rural  district  school! 

To  make  of  the  city  school  a  civic  center  is  at 
once  a  harder  and  an  easier  task.     City  life  is  richer 


148  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

in  diversions,  and  more  outlets  for  public  enthusiasm 
exist  in  city  than  in  rural  communities.  But  in 
city  as  well  as  country  life,  the  agency  that  keeps 
year  after  year,  generation  after  generation,  its 
vital  point  of  contact  with  neighborhood  affairs,  is 
the  public  school.  Tuberculosis  will  be  vanquished ; 
the  milk  issue,  the  gas  issue,  the  transportation  issue 
will  be  solved  and  pass  away;  playground  associa- 
tions will  lapse  with  the  accomplishment  of  their 
purpose.  But  as  long  as  the  sun  shines  and  the 
spring  comes  round,  there  will  be  children  and 
schools  to  train  them  in ;  and  the  school  will  be  the 
civic  agency  through  whose  patrons  all  things  may 
be  accomplished  and  which  all  things  will  vitally 
affect.  Therefore  the  skillful  school  principal  with 
the  vision  of  real  educational  democracy  will  draw 
together  the  families  of  his  district  in  an  enduring 
organization,  of  which  the  school  is  not  the  directing 
head  but  the  democratic  expression,  in  which  the 
responsibility  for  shaping  policy  and  conducting 
activities  falls  on  the  parents  rather  than  on  the 
teachers,  through  which  all  currents  of  civic  and 
neighborhood  reform  will  naturally  flow,  which 
never  meets  to  hear  a  formal  program,  but  always 
to  handle  a  vital  issue,  and  in  which  the  pride  of 
parenthood  and  the  duties  of  citizenship  meet  in 
an  inevitable  and  indissoluble  union.1 

1  Write  to  the"  Home  Education  Division  of  the  Bureau  of  Educa- 
tion, Washington,  D.  C.,  for  a  free  leaflet  on  How  to  Organize  and  Carry 
on  a  Parent-Teacher  Association. 


X 

SCHOOLHOUSES  AND  CLASSROOMS 

THE  physical  environment  of  education,  the 
actual  structure  and  surroundings  of  the  school- 
house,  the  arrangement  and  decoration  of  the  class- 
rooms —  all  these  are  of  consequence  in  working 
out  any  new  central  problem  in  the  course  of  study. 
Vital  teaching  is  the  essence  of  any  schooling,  but 
teaching  agencies  are  many,  and  not  the  least  potent 
are  those  which  act  indirectly  and  subconsciously 
upon  the  child,  playing  over  his  nature  as  silently 
and  simply  as  the  sunlight  falls,  forming  his  tastes, 
determining  for  him  the  background  in  which  he 
will  feel  at  home.  Such  forces  are  the  home  in 
which  the  child  is  bred ;  the  house  in  which  he  lives, 
with  its  idiosyncrasies  of  nook  and  corner,  tjie  turn 
of  its  stairs,  the  color  of  sunlight  on  the  carpets 
in  his  playroom,  the  sound  of  familiar  voices,  cook- 
ing sights  and  smells,  the  fall  and  texture  of  his 
mother's  dress,  the  garden  scents  and  warmth ; 
these  are  the  fabric  of  which  his  earliest  preferences 
are  composed;  these  make  for  him  sooner  or  later 
his  image  of  home,  familiarity,  and  ease.1  Just  as 
the  child  learns  more  from  what  his  teacher  is  than 

1  See  Walter  Pater,  The  Child  in  the  House. 
149 


150  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

from  all  his  formal  instruction,  so  does  he  learn  more 
from  the  actual  nature  of  his  surroundings  than  we 
often  stop  to  think.  And  the  physical  environment 
of  a  teacher's  work  may  hamper  or  facilitate  her 
efforts  more  than  even  she  herself  will  be  aware. 

What  scene,  then,  have  we  laid  for  public  school- 
ing? 

The  trend  of  school  construction  especially  in  the 
cities  is  toward  larger  and  larger  units  of  adminis- 
tration. Grade  and  high  school  buildings  are  now 
planned  to  house  their  hundreds,  even  their  thou- 
sands of  children ;  and  their  solid  walls  rise  as  a  sub- 
stantial tribute  to  the  faith  American  democracy  has 
placed  in  education.  Centralization,  economy,  sys- 
tem are  the  watchwords  of  the  hour.  Twenty  to  a 
hundred  teachers  are  brought  under  the  direction 
of  one  principal.  Vast  throngs  of  children  gather 
daily  under  one  roof  and  move  precisely  to  the 
sound  of  bells  through  the  day's  schedule  of  classes 
and  recreation.  It  is  inspiring  to  gaze  across  the 
common  hall  of  a  great  high  school  at  the  assembly 
hour,  or  the  playground  of  a  grade  school  at  recess, 
and  to  think  of  this  multitude  of  youthful  spirits 
played  upon  by  the  molding  force  of  education. 

Yet  I  can  never  contemplate  this  tendency  of 
school  architecture  and  school  administration  to 
become  more  and  more  institutional,  without  certain 
mental  reservations.  What  an  enormous  money 
investment  these  grade  and  high  school  buildings 
represent!  And  how  difficult  to  scrap  this  costly 
plant  if  death  sentence  should  some  day  be  passed 


SCHOOLHOUSES  AND  CLASSROOMS      151 

on  large-scale  education.  Long  ago,  indeed,  we 
awakened  to  the  failure  of  large-scale  institutional 
methods  in  the  handling  of  delinquent,  defective, 
and  dependent  persons.  With  the  first  interest  in 
the  training  of  subnormals  and  the  reformation  of 
criminals,  came  the  recognition  of  the  need  for  indi- 
vidual care  and  of  the  stultifying  effect  of  mass 
management  and  over-organization.  With  a  livelier 
sense  of  responsibility  toward  the  dependent  poor 
came  the  realization  that  old  folk  housed  in  huge 
institutional  poorhouses  sank  rapidly  to  the  level 
of  animal  senility ;  and  that  children  reared  by  the 
hundred  in  even  the  best  and  most  carefully  con- 
ducted orphanages  lacked,  when  they  emerged  at 
last  to  make  their  own  way  in  the  world,  the  physical 
and  intellectual  vigor  of  the  home-bred  child  and  the 
qualities  of  self-dependence  and  initiative  neces- 
sary to  business  success.  Orphanages,  poorhouses, 
penitentiaries,  reformatories,  insane  asylums,  and 
schools  for  the  deaf,  blind,  dumb,  and  feeble-minded 
—  all  have  long  since  discarded  their  large  single 
structures  for  small  cottages  built  to  imitate  the 
modern  home.  The  uniform,  the  lock  step,  the 
shaved  head,  the  big  building,  the  big  dining  room, 
the  big  dormitory,  the  eternal  bell  —  all  have  dis- 
appeared from  our  progressive  penal  and  charitable 
institutions  along  with  the  idea  that  individuals 
can  be  handled  in  mass  and  develop  valuable  human 
qualities.  A  marvelous  educational  revolution  has 
taken  place  in  the  plant  and  methods  of  these  cor- 
rective agencies,  and  upon  their  conduct  and  equip- 


152  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

ment  vast  sums  of  money  have  been  lavished.  It 
has  been  estimated  that  we  shall  shortly  spend  as  a 
nation  and  that  some  states  do  actually  at  present 
spend  more  on  their  wonderful  scientific  training 
schools  for  defectives  in  which  groups  are  small  and 
each  individual  receives  close  and  sympathetic 
supervision,  than  on  the  education  of  those  normal 
children  who  form  the  strength  and  bulwark  of  our 
country. 

Yet  why  should  not  this  cottage  plan,  so  successful 
with  defectives,  succeed  with  normal  children  ?  We 
progress  like  the  crab,  backwards.  Normal  hygiene 
lags  behind  curative  medicine.  Normal  education 
slowly  follows  afar  off  in  the  forward  steps  of  training 
for  defectives.  We  discovered  that  fresh  air  and 
sunlight  cured  tuberculosis  and  only  afterwards  that 
they  are  necessities  of  existence  for  the  sound  as 
well.  And  so  in  education,  having  found  that  an 
idiot  can  be  taught  only  by  the  small  scale  method, 
perhaps  it  will  occur  to  us  to  try  the  cottage  plan  in 
ordinary  public  education.  If  I  had  a  small  child  at 
school,  I  should  want  to  put  him  in  the  backward  or 
tubercular  division.  The  only  reason  why  our  nor- 
mal children  have  stood  the  wholesale  factory  style  of 
training  we  have  given  them  is  that  they  are  tough 
and  strong.  They  survive  to  some  extent  as  indi- 
vidualities in  spite  of  the  clumsy  system.  But  how 
fruitful  might  the  harvest  be  if  we  lavished  on  them 
the  up-to-date  methods,  the  model  cottages,  and 
the  individual  care  we  now  save  for  criminals  and 
idiots  ? 


SCHOOLHOUSES  AND  CLASSROOMS       153 

I  look  forward  to  the  time  when  this  will  be  the 
case ;  when  even  our  great  universities  will  break  up, 
as  they  are  breaking  practically  if  not  openly,  into 
separate  colleges  with  a  cooperative  common  life; 
when  the  high  school  will  be  a  similar  group  institu- 
tion ;  and  when  the  neighborhood  cottage  will  replace 
our  present  caravanseries  of  lower  learning.  In 
private  and  experimental  schools,  free  from  the 
cramping  machinery  of  a  public  system,  the  move- 
ment is  already  markedly  in  the  way  of  small-scale 
education,  with  a  manifest  improvement  in  resulting 
personal  culture.  It  remains  for  the  public  school 
system  to  take  over  this  small  basic  unit  and  to 
link  these  lesser  groups  in  large  associative  effort, 
thus  paralleling  our  modern  life  in  which  the  family 
exists  within  the  city,  the  city  in  a  state,  the  state 
within  a  nation,  and  the  nation,  let  us  hope,  some 
day  within  a  democratic  world. 

To  the  teacher  familiar  with,  perhaps  employed 
in,  and  undoubtedly  proud  of,  the  orthodox  and 
splendid  grade  school  building  of  to-day,  this  may 
seem  a  strange,  discomforting  proposal.  The  large 
school  has  seemed  to  her,  as  indeed  it  is,  a  wonderful 
experiment  in  democracy,  gathering  children  to- 
gether from  hundreds  of  homes  over  a  wide  area  and 
bringing  into  cooperation  all  classes  of  society. 
Such  a  teacher  may  assume  that  normal  children 
from  normal  homes  have  there  experienced  the  stim- 
ulus to  individuality  which  we  must  artificially 
create  by  the  cottage  plan  for  our  dependent  or- 
phans ;  and  that  belonging  to  a  great  common  school 


154  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

is  the  best  of  all  preparations  for  our  common  life. 
And  there  is  a  justice  in  this  plea  which  must  not  be 
forgotten  in  the  planning  of  any  small-scale  system 
of  education  aiming  at  a  higher  state  of  individual 
development.  The  social  aim  must  be  preserved. 
The  large  group-consciousness  must  be  awakened. 
The  neighborhood  cottage  school  must  be  daily  and 
visibly  linked  with  other  cottage  schools  and  with 
the  system  as  a  whole.  Contact,  interaction,  inter- 
dependence of  group  with  group  must  be  included 
in  the  scheme. 

But  social  life  if  it  is  to  rise  above  the  level 
of  mob  conduct,  must  be  a  social  life  of  perfected 
personalities  and  not  a  blind  huddling  of  timid, 
sheeplike  intellects.  There  has  appeared  in  Amer- 
ica of  late  a  curious  mob  psychology  in  thought 
and  taste,  previously  alien  to  the  American  spirit. 
Our  independent  and  pioneer  experience  has  kept 
us  till  to-day  a  nation  of  individuals.  But  now  we 
begin  to  live  in  crowds.  We  go  to  school  in  crowds. 
We  live  in  apartment  houses,  hotels,  and  tenements 
in  crowds.  We  eat  in  restaurants  in  crowds.  We 
dress  in  ready-made  garments.  We  think  in  crowds 
under  the  guidance  of  the  press.  We  even  go  to 
war  in  crowds,  for  the  army  is  a  crowd  at  its  best  as 
a  mob  is  a  crowd  at  its  worst.  Our  life  has  become 
from  first  to  last  crowd  life.  And  if  this  gregarious- 
ness  is  not  to  result  in  mob  living,  crowd  life  must  be 
glorified  into  social  life  by  a  cultivation  of  individual 
personality  to  a  point  where  the  person  will  not  be 
dominated  by  the  group  but  will  cooperate  freely 


SCHOOLHOUSES  AND   CLASSROOMS       155 

and  creatively  in  its  activity.  Thence  it  is  that 
for  education  to  assume  an  institutional  aspect; 
for  mass  methods,  cut-and-dried  courses  of  study, 
large  classes,  huge  buildings,  and  formal  classroom 
arrangement  to  become  not  only  the  rule  but  the 
ideal  of  our  great  city  systems  upon  which  the  edu- 
cational development  of  the  rest  of  the  country  will 
be  modeled  —  this  is  a  dangerous  drifting  with  the 
tide,  a  failure  of  education  to  direct  and  prepare 
for  life  problems,  duties,  and  responsibilities.  It  is 
again  the  resurgence  of  that  tyranny  of  the  average 
than  which  no  aristocracy  was  ever  more  absolute, 
more  brutish,  and  more  unprogressive. 

Mr.  Dewey  has  admirably  pointed  out  that  the 
typical  classroom  of  to-day  is  designed  for  listening 
and  not  for  doing.  Desks  fixed  to  the  floor  in  formal 
rows,  too  close  to  permit  bodily  movement  without 
contagious  disturbance  of  one's  neighbors,  directed 
all  toward  a  common  center,  the  teacher's  desk, 
which  stands  often  upon  a  raised  platform  and  dom- 
inates the  room ;  walls  bare  of  everything  that  could 
interest  or  attract  or  stimulate  independent  trains  of 
thought  leading  from  the  task  in  hand  —  here  is 
an  environment  designed  and  fitted  to  reduce  the 
student  to  a  passive  member  of  a  listening,  learning 
mob.  Couple  with  this  ground  plan  of  the  school- 
room the  fact  that  grade  classes  seldom  number 
less  than  forty,  and  often  more  than  sixty,  pupils, 
and  the  stage  is  set  for  repressive  discipline  and 
minimization  of  any  original  thought,  liking,  or  act- 
ing outside  of  the  prescribed  routine.  In  such  a 


156  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

situation,  the  child  is  not  taught.  The  course  of 
study  is  taught,  and  to  stop  on  an  individual  is  to 
lose  the  pace  necessary  to  complete  the  schedule  in 
the  given  time.  To  permit  individual  initiative  is 
to  introduce  a  disturbing  leaven  into  the  situation. 
To  stimulate  individual  initiative  is  suicidal  for  the 
teacher.  Sixty  small  children  in  one  small  room 
developing  their  own  ideas,  expressing  them,  and 
carrying  them  out  would  make  a  bedlam  in  which 
no  one  could  think  or  work  or  have  an  idea  of  his 
own,  and  in  which  the  teacher  would  lose  all  super- 
visory and  directing  power.  Under  current  condi- 
tions, in  the  current  school  environment,  it  is  a 
case  of  suppress  or  perish  both  for  the  teacher  and 
for  education.  Yet  under  current  conditions  in  the 
current  school  environment,  neither  teacher  nor  edu- 
cation reaches  its  best  efficiency. 

Some  years  ago  while  teaching  in  a  large  eastern 
school,  I  found  my  classroom  rendered  uninhabitable 
by  the  roar  of  riveting  machines  upon  a  steel  struc- 
ture in  process  of  erection  across  the  street.  Even 
with  shut  windows,  recitations  could  progress  only 
in  the  momentary  intervals  between  rivets.  Every 
other  classroom  in  the  building  was  in  constant 
occupation.  But  finally,  after  desperate  search,  I  dis- 
covered a  small  alcove  in  the  gallery  of  the  school 
chapel,  fitted  with  a  large  library  table  and  a  group 
of  chairs,  which  had  been  used  for  a  teacher's  study 
and  for  English  interviews.  To  this  alcove,  I  ob- 
tained permission  to  transport  the  smallest  of  my 
classes.  Here  in  quiet,  we  sat  down  around  the 


SCHOOLHOUSES  AND   CLASSROOMS       157 

table,  my  only  distinction  consisting  in  an  armchair 
at  the  head;  and  here  we  began  our  recitation. 
Suddenly  the  class  became  galvanized  into  new 
activity.  Pupils  who  had  never  offered  to  recite 
now  clamored  for  a  hearing.  Embarrassment  dis- 
appeared. Personalities  appeared.  The  amount  of 
outside  work  voluntarily  assumed  by  the  class  rose 
amazingly.  The  intensity  of  application,  the  thor- 
oughness and  interest  of  discussion,  the  pace  of 
advance  increased.  The  pupils  became  eager  not 
merely  to  get  their  lesson  and  answer  questions  but 
to  contribute  something  to  the  class  discussions. 
One  subnormal  and  previously  failing  child  accom- 
plished more  in  this  subject  than  many  normal 
girls  submerged  in  other  classes.  I  myself  experi- 
enced a  new  increase  of  interest  in  the  subject  and 
liking  for  the  pupils ;  and  it  could  not  but  occur  to  me 
that  the  simple  change  from  the  formal  rows  of  the 
old  classroom  to  the  round  table  of  the  chapel  alcove 
had  worked  the  miracle.  At  the  close  of  the  semes- 
ter, I  asked  to  transfer  to  the  chapel  all  my  classes 
which  could  possibly  be  crowded  around  the  alcove 
table ;  and  the  results  were  equally  encouraging. 
A  seemingly  unimportant  change  in  environment 
had  created  a  new  atmosphere,  a  contact  of  ideas 
and  personalities,  a  spirit  of  women  working  to- 
gether and  contributing,  each  in  her  way,  to  a  com- 
mon end. 

Subsequent  reminiscence  and  observation  con- 
vince me  that  this  rough  experiment  points  the 
way  to  the  ideal  classroom  of  to-morrow.  I  look 


158  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

back  with  the  keenest  pleasures  upon  the  Seminar 
courses  which  I  took  at  college  because  of  the  in- 
formal and  eager  intercourse  between  student  and 
professor  around  the  long  oaken  tables  of  the  tower 
rooms.  I  look  back  with  equal  pleasure -upon  post- 
graduate work  under  a  professor  who  met  his 
classes  in  a  roomy,  book-lined  office  with  the  great 
round  table  in  the  midst  and  its  walls  covered  with  a 
curious  collection  of  pictures  which  had  once  con- 
tributed perhaps  something  to  his  own  study  or  to 
class  discussions.  Where,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  do 
we  find  the  most  spontaneous,  most  individual,  most 
constructive,  and  most  thorough  class  instruction? 
In  the  graduate  school  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
kindergarten  on  the  other!  At  the  two  extremes  of 
education,  we  adopt  the  free  round  table  method  of 
procedure;  and  why  not  uproot  grade  and  high 
school  pupils  also  from  their  rigid  rows,  why  not 
turn  the  whole  system  of  education  into  a  series  of 
vital  human  contacts,  and  its  physical  environment 
into  an  educative  and  stimulating  instead  of  a  regi- 
menting and  repressing  force? 

The  movable  chairs  which  now  more  and  more  are 
replacing  high  school  desks  are  a  step  in  the  right 
direction,  though  I  fear  they  were  introduced  rather 
to  make  room  for  more  pupils  per  yard  of  floor  space 
and  to  accommodate  the  disconcerting  irregularity 
in  the  size  of  pupils  at  the  adolescent  age.  Many 
teachers  still  object  to  them,  because  they  are  not 
always  at  the  same  places  in  the  room,  because  the 
pupils  shuffle  and  move  in  them  noisily,  because 


SCHOOLHOUSES  AND  CLASSROOMS      159 

books  are  always  dropping  from  the  table  arm,  be- 
cause, in  fact,  you  cannot  help  feeling  your  class's 
restless  young  life  when  you  give  them  something 
movable  on  which  to  sit.  The  very  teacher  who 
will  balance  through  the  whole  recitation  on  one  leg 
after  another  of  his  chair  is  often  most  distressed 
by  class  mobility.  But  the  schoolroom  does  not 
exist  for  the  peace  and  comfort  of  the  teacher ;  and 
movable  chairs  are  an  emancipation.  They  may  be 
still  set  in  rows  from  force  of  habit  but  they  do 
not  have  to  remain  there  when  once  the  teacher 
learns  the  value  of  freedom  in  arrangement.  It 
will  undoubtedly  be  harder  to  "control"1  a  class  of 
twenty  grouped  about  a  table  than  a  class  of  twenty 
seated  at  fixed  desks  at  separate  intervals  under  the 
roaming  eye  of  an  elevated  pedagogue.  But  teaching 
is  a  calling  where  we  ask  not  "is  it  hard  ?"  but  "is  it 
best?"  It  is  easier  to  use  a  whip  than  a  curb,  but 
who  would  drive  a  plow  horse  when  he  can  sit  behind 
a  racer  ?  It  is  easier  to  steer  a  canoe  across  a  sleep- 
ing lake  than  amid  wind  and  wave.  But  he  who 
can  will  choose  the  active  part  and  find  in  difficulty 
his  joy  and  his  reward.  A  class  where  each  child  is 
reacting  violently  and  creatively  may  wear  a  rest- 
less look  disturbing  to  the  old-line  disciplinarian,  but 
there  is  nine  times  out  of  ten  more  concentration 
in  its  slight  disorder  than  in  a  stolid  and  seemingly 
attentive  class.  It  is  a  lake  broken  by  the  wind  — 
awake  —  alive.  Control  that  depends  on  a  platform 
and  rigid  seating  has  little  educative  value.  But 

1  In  the  old  disciplining  sense  of  the  word. 


160  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

control  that  grows  from  contact,  comradeship,  en- 
thusiasm, and  leadership,  from  the  creation  of  an 
atmosphere  of  culture  and  of  beauty,  from  a  spirit  of 
fair  play  and  cooperation,  from  a  generous  give  and 
take  and  freedom  of  expression  —  that  is  a  control 
which  is  refining,  educative,  and  liberal.  And  that 
is  a  control  which  is  fostered  not  by  an  environment 
giving  physical  superiority  to  the  teacher,  which  is 
what  the  ordinary  classroom  does,  but  by  an  en- 
vironment in  which  her  spiritual  and  cultural  supe- 
riority is  subtly  emphasized,  and  whose  atmosphere 
breathes  of  devotion  to  the  higher  and  better  things 
of  life. 

How  such  an  atmosphere  can  be  created,  we  may 
now  briefly  hint.  I  have  spoken  of  the  neighbor- 
hood cottage  as  a  possible  successor  to  our  present 
mammoth  grade  school  structures,  and  of  groups  of 
such  cottages  under  the  direction  of  one  super- 
visor and  combining  for  many  school  activities,  like 
pageants,  games,  and  athletics,  where  large-scale 
cooperation  can  be  most  easily  arranged.  This 
neighborhood  cottage  could  contain  several  rooms 
and  teaching  could  be  given  by  the  departmental 
method  now  increasingly  recognized  as  most  effi- 
cient, some  teachers  even  passing  from  school  to 
school  if  this  proved  necessary.  Every  advance  in 
method  and  equipment  which  is  known  to  modern 
pedagogy  could  be  installed  in  these  cottages  as 
easily  as  in  a  large-scale  institution.  Only  there 
could  be  a  great  money  saving  in  construction  since 
it  is  the  large  school  with  its  long  halls,  many  stories, 


SCHOOLHOUSES  AND  CLASSROOMS       161 

and  large  enrollment  which  necessitates  the  massive 
and  expensive  fireproof  buildings  now  in  vogue.  The 
cost  of  ground  site  would  not  be  more  than  in  the 
one  story  school  now  coming  more  and  more  into 
use  in  up-to-date  cities.  The  nearness  to  the  chil- 
dren's homes  would  permit  friendly  visiting  between 
parents  and  teachers  and  safe  passage  of  children 
from  home  to  school.  And  the  school  itself  might 
serve  in  architecture,  furnishings,  decoration,  and 
landscape  gardening  as  a  model  for  the  home  life 
of  the  neighborhood  and  a  center  for  its  common 
recreation.  Each  school  building  could  be  equipped 
with  a  kitchen  by  way  of  a  cooking  laboratory,  with 
a  sewing  room  and  linen  closet,  with  a  model  bath- 
room and  laundry,  a  library,  a  living  room,  and  a 
bedroom  for  naps  for  the  little  children,  and  prac- 
tice in  sweeping  and  dusting.  The  children  could 
keep  up  the  yard  and  plant  flowers  and  vegetables  in 
its  garden,  and  study  the  bird  life  in  its  trees.  In 
short,  a  miniature  home  world  could  be  created  so 
close  to  the  home  life  of  child  and  parent  as  to  react 
sharply  upon  the  habits  and  ideals  of  each. 

Every  teacher  would  have  control  of  the  arrange- 
ment of  her  classroom  and  would  express  thereby 
her  personal  tastes  and  likings,  her  view  of  culture, 
her  notions  of  comfort,  leisure,  etiquette,  and  behav- 
ior, and  her  sense  of  values.  Each  classroom  would 
be  the  teacher's  study;  her  departmental  library  in 
the  bookcases,  open  for  the  little  folks  to  see  and 
handle,  her  pictures  on  the  wall,  her  desk  in  the 
corner,  a  library  table  and  chairs  for  every  one  in 


162  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

the  midst  —  a  place  where  the  children  came  to 
breathe  the  atmosphere  of  a  developed  individuality 
tempered  to  the  pursuit  of  some  branch  of  liberal 
learning,  which  flowered  into  a  beautiful  life  in  beau- 
tiful surroundings. 

How  to  evolve  the  group  high  school  is  a  difficult 
matter  that  cannot  be  settled  in  a  discussion  mainly 
concerned  with  grade  school  problems.  Luckily 
the  author  wishes  merely  to  suggest  and  not  to  work 
out  in  detail  an  ideal  for  grade  and  high  schools 
which  it  would  require  long  practice  to  perfect. 
But  here  lies  the  way  of  progress  in  public  schooling ; 
and  whether  we  take  this  path  or  proceed  in  our 
regimentation  of  education  till  we  impose  a  system 
of  wholesale  intellectual  domination  upon  our  cit- 
izens, like  that  which  made  possible  the  startling 
subservience  of  educated  Germany  in  this  present 
War  to  an  antiquated  political  idea  —  this  will 
partly  determine  whether  we  shall  lead  the  world 
to  the  new  social  culture  of  to-morrow  or  fall  into  the 
ranks  behind  some  more  liberal,  personalized,  and 
cultured  nation. 


XI 
CONCLUSION 

IN  this  brief  and  partial  survey  of  our  outstanding 
national  problems  and  their  relation  to  the  common 
branches  of  grade  school  instruction,  many  things 
have  been  omitted  which  deserve  consideration  and 
many  questions  have  been  raised  to  which  no  satis- 
factory answer  has  been  given.  Much,  too,  that  is 
set  down  in  these  pages  is  already  familiar  to  the 
progressive  and  intelligent  instructor.  But  our  aim 
has  been  not  so  much  to  exhaust  our  subject  as  to 
point  out  the  issues ;  not  so  much  to  convey  fresh 
and  startling  information  as  to  group  known  facts 
about  a  new  center  of  thought  and  progress. 

No  one  person  can  map  out  alone  a  program  by 
which  the  teaching  of  present  grade  school  subjects 
can  be  made  automatically  to  prepare  our  boys  and 
girls  to  vote  intelligently  on  questions  of  public  own- 
ership, supervise  with  alertness  the  officials  who  con- 
duct enterprises  in  which  the  public  is  concerned, 
and  support  unanimously  progressive  social  legisla- 
tion; cooperate  democratically  with  labor,  if  they 
happen  to  be  capitalists,  or  deal  fairly  and  intelli- 
gently with  capital  if  they  happen  to  be  laborers ; 
think  in  national  terms  instead  of  local  and  per- 

163 


164  SOCIALIZING  THE  THREE  R'S 

sonal;  and  formulate  and  demand  through  their 
national  suffrage  a  complete  and  just  and  workable 
program  of  international  relations.  The  elabora- 
tion of  such  a  program  must  be  left  to  the  united  and 
patient  efforts  of  a  generation  of  educators.  But 
such  a  program  must  be  the  goal  toward  which  we 
work;  and  to  every  American  teacher  whose  eyes 
are  set  on  the  future,  who  has  heard  the  call  to 
national  and  world  democracy,  and  who  sees  that  it 
is  through  education  that  we  shall  win  at  last  the 
Great  War  whose  opening  chapter  has  been  writ 
with  so  much  precious  blood  —  to  every  such  Ameri- 
can teacher,  this  little  book  says  "Carry  On." 

The  armies  of  our  Allies  are  being  mustered  home 
again  and  the  peace  for  which  we  long  has  come  at 
last,  but  the  battle  for  democracy  is  not  won.  Democ- 
racy is  not  achieved  with  the  ending  of  the  War; 
it  has  only  earned  the  chance  to  be  born.  And 
it  is  the  teachers  of  all  the  world  who,  in  great  city 
or  isolated  rural  hamlet,  will  determine  the  fate  of 
that  ideal  whose  chance  of  trial  we  have  bought  so 
dear.  If  in  the  teaching  of  English  and  history  and 
art,  we  can  widen  the  vision  and  sympathies  of  our 
pupils  and  interest  them  in  the  civic  and  national 
problems  that  confront  our  citizens ;  if  through  arith- 
metic we  can  lead  them  to  see  the  details  of  the 
process  by  which  a  democracy  moves  step  by  step 
nearer  to  its  ideals;  if  through  manual  training  we 
can  create  the  love  and  habit  of  social  service; 
if  through  social  play  we  can  refine  and  elevate  our 
common  life  and  warm  into  emotional  verities  those 


CONCLUSION  165 

principles  on  which  democracy  is  based,  we  as  teach- 
ers will  have  done  our  bit  toward  finishing  the  task 
so  heroically  begun  on  August  4,  1914,  by  a  little 
people  who  pointed  the  way  to  justice  for  all  the 
world. 

Shall  we  not  then  as  teachers  study  with  a 
new  thoroughness  and  intensity  every  aspect  of 
contemporary  civilization  ?  Shall  it  not  be  our  duty 
to  know  the  world  and  its  currents  of  thought; 
to  examine  every  proposed  application  of  democratic 
principles  to  our  civic  life ;  to  reshape  our  instruction 
by  the  changing  needs  and  issues  of  the  day  ?  Shall 
we  not  view  our  calling  in  a  new  and  sacred  light? 
In  our  teachers'  meetings,  in  our  daily  conversation, 
in  planning  day  by  day  our  class  lessons  and  assign- 
ments, shall  we  not  ask  ourselves  with  a  new  empha- 
sis, "How  well  have  we  prepared  our  pupils  for 
achieving  the  ideals  for  which  so  many  brave  men 
and  women  in  so  many  lands  have  died  ?  "  Let  us 
teach  so  that  the  War  will  not  have  been  fought  in 
vain ;  so  that  through  lack  of  educative  preparedness 
at  least,  industrial,  social,  political,  and  interna- 
tional democracy  need  not  perish  from  the  earth ! 


APPENDIX  I 

READING  ON  PROBLEMS  OF  AMERICAN  LIFE 

Culture  in  America : 

Canby ,  College  Sons  and  College  Fathers  ;  Harper,  New  York  City. 
H.  G.  Wells,  The  Future  in  America;  Harper,  New  York  City. 
Arnold  Bennett,  Your  United  States;  Harper,  New  York  City. 
Miinsterberg,  American  Traits;  Houghton  Mifflin,  Boston, 

Mass. 

Americans;  Doubleday  Page,  Garden  City,  L.  I. 
Politics : 

Ely,  R.  T.,  The  World  War  and  Leadership  in  a  Democracy; 

The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York  City. 
Wallas,  Human  Nature  and  Politics;  Macmillan  and  Company, 

London. 
Macy  and  Gannaway's  Comparative  Free  Government;    The 

Macmillan  Co.,  New  York  City. 
Industry : 

Final  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Industrial  Relations,  Washing- 
ton, D.  C. 
Weeks,  The  People's  School:  A  Study  in  Vocational  Training; 

Houghton  Mifflin,  Boston,  Mass. 

Seager,  Introduction  to  Economics;   Holt,  New  York  City. 
Ely  and  Wicker,  Elementary  Principles  of  Economics;    The 

Macmillan  Co.,  New  York  City. 
Hoxie,    Trade   Unionism  in  the   United  States;    Appleton's, 

New  York  City. 
Commons    and    Andrews,    Principles   of   Labor    Legislation; 

Harper's,  New  York  City. 
International  Issues : 

Wister,  The  Pentecost  of  Calamity;  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New 

York  City. 

Usher,  Pan-Germanism;  Houghton  Mifflin,  Boston,  Mass. 

167 


APPENDIX  II 

(a)  Teaching  the  sentence,  together  with  general  aims  and 
methods  of  composition  work  in  the  grades. 

Chubb,  Teaching  of  English  Composition,  Chapter  XI ;  Mac- 
millan,  New  York  City. 

Charters,  Teaching  the  Common  Branches;  Houghton  Mifflin, 
Boston,  Mass. 

Canby,  English  Composition  in  Theory  and  Practice;  Mac- 
millan  Co.,  New  York  City.  (A  book  for  university 
students;  splendid  to  give  the  teacher  a  clear  notion  of 
what  a  sentence  is  and  what  grammatical  relationships 
mean  in  thought.) 

Gesell,  The  Normal  Child  and  Primary  Education,  Chapter 
XII ;  Ginn,  Boston,  Mass. 

Klapper,  The  Teaching  of  English;  Appleton,  New  York 
City. 

Mahoney,  Standards  in  English;  World  Book  Co.,  Yonkers, 
N.  Y.  (A  complete  course  of  study  in  oral  and  written 
composition  for  elementary  schools.  Should  not  be 
slavishly  followed.) 

Wilson  and  Wilson,  The  Motivation  of  Education,  Chapter  VI ; 
Houghton  Mifflin,  Boston,  Mass. 

(6)   General  references  on  grade  school  English. 

Arnold,  Reading  and  How  to  Teach  It;  Silver  Burdett,  Bos- 
ton, Mass. 

Briggs  and  Coffman,  Reading  in  the  Public  Schools;  Row, 
Peterson  &  Co.,  Chicago. 

Chubb,  The  Teaching  of  English,  Macmillan,  New  York  City. 

Carpenter,  Baker  and  Scott,  The  Teaching  of  English;  Long- 
mans, New  York  City. 

168 


APPENDIX  169 

Freeman,   Psychology  of  the  Common  Branches;     Hough  ton 

Mifflin,  Boston,  Mass. 
Gilbert,    What   Children   Study   and   Why;     Silver   Burdett, 

Boston,  Mass. 
Hosic,  The  Elementary  School  Course  in  English;  University 

of  Chicago  Press. 

Klapper,  Teaching  Children  to  Read  and  The  Teaching  of  Eng- 
lish;   Appleton's,  New  York  City.     (This  latter  contains 
excellent  bibliographies  at  the  end  of  each  chapter.) 
Kendall  and  Mirick,  How  to   Teach  Fundamental  Subjects; 

Houghton  Mifflin,  Boston,  Mass. 

McMurray,  Special  Method  in  the  Reading  of  English  Classics, 
Elements  of  General  Method,  and  The  Method  of  the  Reci- 
tation; Macmillan  Co.,  New  York  City. 
McClintock,  Literature  in  the  Elementary  School;  University 

of  Chicago  Press,  Chicago. 
Serl,  Primary  Language  Lessons;    American  Book  Co.,  New 

York  City. 
Spalding,    The  Problem  of  Elementary  Composition;     Heath 

and  Co.,  Boston,  Mass. 
Wilson  and  Wilson,  Motivation  of  School  Subjects;  Houghton 

Mifflin,  Boston,  Mass. 
See  Nat.  Ed.  Assn.  Report  for  1915,  p.  561,  for  Bibliography 

on  reading  tests. 

(c)  Horace  Mann  School  Reading  Course  for  Grades  One  to 
Seven.  (This  list  is  given  not  because  it  seems  to  the  author  an 
ideal  one  to  follow  but  since  it  furnishes  a  chart  of  intellectual 
capacity  at  the  various  grades,  contains  material  that  children 
are  pretty  sure  to  like,  and  may  suggest  new  English  sources 
to  the  inexperienced  teacher.  The  list  has  the  vice  of  being 
largely  composed  of  units  adapted  to  the  single  recitation  hour, 
whereas  it  is  to  the  author's  mind  highly  desirable  to  read  books 
and  long  stories  that  carry  over,  especially  as  the  children  grow 
older.  The  list  is  also  rather  limited  in  its  inclusion  of  novels, 
foreign  books,  historical  reading,  or  material  not  strictly  literary 
in  its  nature.) 


170  APPENDIX 

FIRST  GRADE 

Readers  Used : 

The  Riverside  Primer,  Child's  Classics  Primer,  Child's  Classics 

First  Reader,  Rhyme  and  Story  Primer,  First  Readers  by 

Summers,  and  Free  and  Treadwell. 
Readings : 

Stevenson :  Child's  Garden  of  Verse :  The  Cow,  Bed  in  Summer, 

Windy  Nights,  My  Shadow,  The  Little  Land,  The  Land 

of  Story  Book,  The  Lamp  Lighter,  The  Swing. 
Sherman :    Little-Folk    Lyrics :    The    Snow    Bird,    Song    for 

Winter,  Hide  and  Seek,  Snowflakes,  The  Fairies'  Dream. 
Celia  Thaxter:     March,  April,  Wild  Geese,  Little  Gustava, 

Chanticleer. 
C.  Rossetti :  The  Wind. 
Tennyson :  The  Throstle. 
Scott :  Nature  Study:  Putting  the  World  to  Bed,  Baby  Ferns, 

Little  Snow  Flakes. 
Lovejoy :  Nature  in  Verse :    A  Laughing  Chorus,  The  First 

Snow  Drop. 

Stories  Told  by  Teacher : 
Grim :    Cinderella,  The  Sleeping  Beauty,  The  Musicians  of 

Bremen. 

Anderson :  The  Discontented  Pine  Tree,  The  Ugly  Duckling. 
Lang:    The  Green  Fairy  Book:   The  Three  Pigs,  The  Three 

Bears,  The  Half  Chick.     The  Red  Fairy  Book:     Little 

Red  Riding  Hood. 
jEsop :    The  Dove  and  the  Ant,  The  Boy  and  the  Wolf,  The 

Dog  and  His  Shadow,  The  Sun  and  the  Wind,  The  Lion 

and  the  Mouse. 

Bryant:   Stories  to  Tett  Children:   The  Elves  and  the  Shoe- 
maker, The  Gingerbread  Man,  The  Hen  and  the  Grain 

of  Wheat,  Another  Little  Red  Hen. 
Richards :   The  Wheat  Field,  Pig  Brother.     The  Child's  World : 

The  North  Wind,  Santa  Claus  and  the  Mouse,  The  Christ 

Child. 
Wiggin :  Picciola. 


APPENDIX  171 

Harrison :  Prince  Harweda. 
Thompson:  Raggylug. 

Blaisdell :  Second  Reader :  Chicken  Little.     Graded  Literature 
Readers,  First  Book :  Three  Little  Goats  Gruff. 

SECOND  GRADE 

Readers : 

Riverside  First  Reader,  The  Progressive  Road  to  Reading, 
Bingham's  Merry  Animal  Tales,  Second  Readers  by 
Hervey  and  Hix,  Free  and  Treadwell,  Baker  and  Car- 
penter, and  Children's  Classics  in  Dramatic  Form,  Book  II, 
by  Stevenson. 
Readings : 

Longfellow:  Hiawatha  (Selections). 

Wiley :  Mewanee,  the  Little  Indian  Boy. 

Bryce :  Child  Lore. 

Dickinson :  A  Day. 

Shelley :  The  Cloud  (Extracts). 

Field  :    The  Night  Wind,  The  Gingham  Dog. 

Tennyson :  The  Owl. 

Herford :  The  Elf's  Umbrella. 

Bunner :  One,  Two,  Three. 

Ingelow  :  Seven  Times  Over. 

Johnson :    The  Lullaby  of  the  Iroquois,  Indian  Cradle  Song. 

Myall :  Indian  Mother's  Lullaby. 

Arnold :  The  Swallows. 

Stedman :  Four  Winds. 

Unknown :  The  Open  Secret. 

Lear :  Nonsense  Alphabet. 

Burgess :  Goop  Rhymes. 

Blake :  The  Shepherd. 

Lucas :  Rhymes  for  Children. 

Coleridge :  Up,  Up,  Ye  Dames. 

Rossetti :  Sing  Song. 

Stevenson  :  Child's  Garden  of  Verse. 

Sherman :  Little-Folk  Lyrics. 

Tabb :  Child  Lyrics. 


172  APPENDIX 

Stories  Told : 

Bryant :  The  Fire  Bringer,  Little  Tavwots,  The  Cat  and  the 
Parrot,  Hans  in  Luck,  Epaminondas  and  his  Amelia, 
How  Brother  Rabbit  Fooled  the  Whale  and  Mrs.  Ele- 
phant, The  Little  Jackal  and  the  Alligator,  Billy  Big  and 
His  Bull,  Rumpelstiltskin. 

Stories  from  Greek  Mythology  :  Phae'thon,  Mercury,  Endymion, 
Latona,  Baucis  and  Philemon. 

Bible  :  David  and  Goliath,  23d  Psalm,  Christmas  story. 

Adaptation  of  the  Schonberg  Cotta  Family. 

Defoe:  Robinson  Crusoe  (selections). 

Bailey  and  Lewis :    Children's  Hour:  Legend  of  Arbutus. 

.<Esop :  The  Crow  and  the  Pitcher,  The  Hare  and  the  Tor- 
toise, The  Man,  the  Boy,  and  the  Donkey. 

Richards :  Short  Stories :  The  Golden  Windows,  The  Great 
Feast,  The  Hill,  The  Shadow,  Child's  Play,  The  Cooky, 
James'  Lesson. 

Free  and  Tread  well :  Second  Reader:  Hansel  and  Gretel, 
Peter  Pan. 

THIRD  GRADE 

Readers : 

Riverside  Second  Reader,  Art  Literature  Reader,  Book  II,  Third 

Readers,  Aldine,  and  Hervey  and  Hix. 
Readings : 

Collodi :  Pinocchio. 

Carroll :  Alice  in  Wonderland. 

Brown  :  In  the  Days  of  the  Giants,  Book  of  Saints  and  Friendly 
Beasts. 

Jackson  :  October's  Bright  Blue  Weather,  Clouds. 

Sherman :  Wizzard  Frost,  A  Real  Santa  Claus. 

Longfellow  :  The  Children's  Hour. 

Allingham :  Fairy  Folks,  Wishing. 

Carey:  Suppose. 

Field  :  A  Sudden  Shower,  Little  Orphant  Annie. 

Coolidge :  How  the  Leaves  Came  Down. 

Moore :  The  Night  before  Christmas. 


APPENDIX  173 

Anon. :  A  Wonderful  Weaver. 
Rands  :  The  Wonderful  World. 
Johnston :  Growing  Chorus. 
Stories  Told : 

Bible  :  The  Story  of  Joseph. 

Greek  Myths  :  Arachne,  Prometheus,  Ares. 

Anderson  :  Little  Glaus  and  Big  Glaus. 

Grim :  Snow  White  and  the  Seven  Dwarfs. 

Bryant :    Stories  to  Tell  Children:    The  Stag  and  the  Fir  Tree, 

The  Golden  Cobweb,  The  Hero  of  Haarlem. 
Fifty  Famous  Stories:  The  Endless  Tale,  The  Wise  Men  of 

Gotham,  King  Alfred  Stories. 
Kipling:  Jungle  Book:  Rikki-Tiki-Tavi. 
Thompson :  Lobo. 
Riley  :  The  Bear  Story. 
Harris :  Uncle  Remus. 
Longfellow :  Hiawatha. 
JSsop :  The  Town  Mouse  and  the  City  Mouse. 


FOURTH  GRADE 

Readers : 

Riverside  Third  Reader,  Alexander's  Child  Classics  (3). 
Readings : 

Ruskin :  King  of  the  Golden  River. 

Longfellow:     Birds   of  Killingworth,   Bell   of  Atri,   Village 
Blacksmith. 

100th  and  23d  Psalm. 

Coleridge :  He  Prayeth  Well. 

Dickenson  :  Out  of  the  Morning. 

Thaxter :  The  Sandpiper. 

Jackson :  September. 

Wordsworth :  Daffodils. 

Story :  The  Desert. 

Kingsley :  Water  Babies :  The  River  Song. 

Field  :  A  Dutch  Lullaby,  A  Norse  Lullaby. 


174  APPENDIX 

Hogg :  A  Boy's  Song. 
America. 
Stories  Told : 

Bible :  Daniel  in  the  Lion's  Den. 

Macaulay  :  Horatius  at  the  Bridge. 

Homer :  Wanderings  of  Ulysses. 

Cabot:  Ethics  for  Children:  Damon  and  Pythias. 

Story :  The  Gulf  in  the  Forum. 

Kipling  :  Jungle  Books:  Quiquern,  The  White  Seal. 

Harris :  Uncle  Remus. 

Grimm:  The  King  of  the  Birds,  Faithful  John,  The  Seven 

Ravens. 

Anderson  :  The  Brave  Tin  Soldier,  What  the  Goodman  Does. 
Msop :  The  Crab  and  His  Mother. 
Scott :  Bruce  and  the  Spider. 
Richards :  The  Patient  Cat. 
Pardue  and  Griswold:  Language  thru  Nature  and  Art:  Why 

the  Ears  of  Wheat  Are  Small. 

FIFTH  GRADE 

Readers : 

Riverside  Fourth  Reader. 
Readings : 

Hawthorne:  Wonderbook,  Tanglewood  Tales. 

Spyri :  Heidi. 

24th  Psalm. 

Hunt :  Abou  Ben  Adhem. 

Holland  :  Heaven  Is  Not  Reached  at  a  Single  Bound. 

Jackson  :  Down  to  Sleep. 

Tennyson :  The  Brook. 

Bryant :  Planting  the  Apple  Tree. 

Hemans :  The  Voice  of  Spring. 

Taylor :  The  Boys  and  the  Apple  Tree. 

Van  Dyke :  The  Song  Sparrow. 

Trowbridge :  The  Farm  Yard  Song. 

Emerson  :  The  Mountain  and  the  Squirrel. 


APPENDIX  175 

Saxe :  The  Blind  Man  and  the  Elephant. 
Holmes :  Contentment. 
Longfellow :  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus. 
Southey :  Inchcape  Rock,  The  Legend  of  Bishop  Hatto. 
Whittier :  Snow-Bound. 
Kipling :  The  Overland  Mail. 
Stories  Read  or  Told : 

Bible :  David  and  Goliath,  Jonathan,  Saul. 

Pyle :  King  Arthur. 

Baker  and  Carpenter :  In  the  Fifth  Reader :  Story  of  Roland. 

Lagerlof :  Wonderful  Adventures  of  Nils. 

Wiggin  :  Birds'  Christmas  Carol. 

Arabian  Nights :  Aladdin  and  the  Wonderful  Lamp. 

Kipling :  Just  So  Stories :  The  Cat  that  Walked  by  Himself. 

Knowles :    In  Child's  Classics  Fourth  Reader :  William  Tell. 

Spyri :  Moni  the  Goat  Boy,  The  Little  Runaway. 

Amici :  The  Finest  Lesson  of  the  Year. 

Field  :  The  Mouse  and  the  Mountain. 

SIXTH  GRADE 

Readers : 

Riverside  Fifth  Reader. 
Readings : 

Scott :   Ivanhoe. 

Irving :  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  Rip  Van  Winkle. 

Longfellow :  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  Evangeline,  Skele- 
ton in  Armor,  King  Robert  of  Sicily,  Paul  Revere's  Ride. 

Browning :  How  They  Brought  the  Good  News,  Incident  of 
the  French  Camp,  Herve  Riel. 

Tennyson :  Sweet  and  Low,  The  Eagle,  The  Revenge,  Ring 
Out,  Wild  Bells. 

Lowell :  Yusouf . 

Hemans :  Landing  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers. 

Holmes :  Old  Ironsides. 

Scott :  Lives  There  a  Man. 

Miller :  Columbus. 


176  APPENDIX 

Whitman :  O  Captain,  My  Captain. 
Percy's  Reliques :  Sir  Patrick  Spens. 
Cunningham  :  A  Sea  Song. 
Cornwall :  The  Sea. 
Southy  :  Battle  of  Blenheim. 
19th  Psalm. 
Stories  Read  or  Told : 

Bible :  Story  of  Ruth,  of  Moses. 

Tolstoi :  Twenty  Three  Tales :  The  Three  Questions. 

Isaacs :  Stories  from  the  Rabbis :  The  Three  Boxes. 

Hawthorne :  The  Great  Stone  Face. 

Irving :  Marvelous  Tower. 

Tennyson :  Sir  Galahad. 

Pyle :  Robin  Hood. 

Arabian  Nights:  Sinbad. 

Stockton  :  The  Griffin  and  the  Minor  Canon. 

Kipling  :  The  Ship  that  Found  Herself. 

SEVENTH  GRADE 
Reader : 

Hyde's  School  Speaker  and  Reader. 
Readings : 

Dickens :  Christmas  Carol,  Dombey  and  Son. 

Warner  :  Hunting  the  Deer. 

Burroughs  :  Birds  and  Bees,  Pepacton. 

Lincoln :  Gettysburg  Speech. 

Webster :  Patrick  Henry's  Speech  in  Virginia  Convention. 

McDowell :  Cora's  Creed. 

121st  Psalm. 

Emerson :  Concord  Hymn. 

Pierpont :  Warren's  Address. 

Kipling :     Recessional,   Fuzzy  Wuzzy,   Ballad  of  East  and 

West. 

Byron  :  Destruction  of  Sennacherib. 
Addison  :  Spacious  Firmament  on  High. 
Carmen  :  A  Vagabond  Song. 


APPENDIX  177 


Tennyson :  Lady  of  Shalott. 
Arnold :  Forsaken  Merman. 
Lowell :  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal. 
Emerson  :  The  Snow  Storm. 
Burns :  Poems. 
Stories  Read  and  Told  : 
Bible:  Elijah. 

Andrews :  The  Perfect  Tribute. 
Muir :  Autobiography. 
Hubbard :  Message  to  Garcia. 
Jordan :  Story  of  a  Salmon. 
Hugo :  Story  of  Jean  Valjean. 


APPENDIX  III 

(a)  References  on  methods  of  teaching  arithmetic. 

Klapper,  The   Teaching  of  Arithmetic;  Appleton,  New  York 

City. 
McMurray,  Special  Method  in  Arithmetic;    Macmillan,  New 

York  City. 
Suzzallo,    The    Teaching  of  Arithmetic;     Houghton    Mifflin, 

Boston,  Mass. 

(6)  A  topical  summary  of  the  various  aspects  of  our  modern 
social  and  industrial  world  which  might  be  opened  up  for  childish 
exploration  through  the  gateway  of  arithmetic. 
1.   Production, 
(a)  Agriculture. 
(1)  Costs. 

f  cost  price 

(a)  Cost  of  land  \  \  taxes  and  maintenance. 

\  to  rent 

(6)  Cost  of  cultivation  for  various  staple  crops. 

/  hired 

Labor  <  . 

I  own  work. 

Seed. 

Fertilizer. 

Machinery,  animals,  etc. 

(c)  Cost  of  raising  live  stock,  ditto. 

(d)  Cost  of  transportation  to  markets. 
(Problems  here  can  be  under  separate  heads  or  inclusive.) 

(2)  Prices. 

(Problems  here  can  be  estimates  of  price  based  on  cost  of  pro- 
duction and  handling,  or  of  profits  based  on  given  costs  and 
prices,  or  mere  calculation  such  as  in  the  grocery  game.) 
(3)  Resources. 

(a)  Areas  of  agricultural  land. 
178 


APPENDIX  179 

(6)  Agricultural  population. 

(c)  Soil  exhaustion  and  conservation. 

(d)  Amount  of  foodstuffs  and  agricultural  products 

consumed  in  United  States. 

(e)  Amount  imported. 

(Problems  to  deal  with  bulk  of  production,  consumption,  and 
imports  compared,  and  with  rate  of  soil  exhaustion  compared 
with  increase  in  consumption.) 
(6)  Industry. 

fi\  r>     v    f  Plant,  machinery,  labor,  raw  material,  man- 
(1)  Costs  <  ;.  . 

{,       agers,  advertising,  marketing. 

f  Costs, 
(2)Prices{profits 

(3)  Extent  and  variety  of  American  industries. 

(4)  Bulk  of  production  compared  with  imports. 

(5)  Number  of   persons  engaged   in  industrial  life  in 

different  occupations,  in  single  factories,  in  dif- 
ferent departments,  on  different  machines. 

(Problems  to  apply  to  one  type  of  plant  or  to  the  bulk  of  in- 
dustrial output,  and  designed  to  illustrate  complexities  of  in- 
dustrial life;  specialization  in  processes;  relation  of  material, 
interest,  and  labor  costs  to  prices ;  bulk  and  importance  of  manu- 
facture ;  and  interdependence  of  nation  on  nation  for  industrial 
products.) 

(c)  Natural  resources. 

(1)  Mining. 

(2)  Water. 

(3)  Timber. 

(4)  Air. 

(Apply  to  all  these,  problems  touching  extent,  uses,  costs  of 
exploitation  and  replacement,  and  rate  of  exhaustion.) 

2.   Consumption, 
(a)  Cost  of  living. 

(1)  Individual  accounts 

(2)  Family  budgets. 


180  APPENDIX 

(6)  Wages. 

(1)  Men. 

(2)  Women. 

(3)  Children. 

(Problems  to  develop  ideas  of  thrift  and  balance  in  expenditure 
and  give  a  conception  of  a  fair  wage  and  a  normal  American 
standard  of  living.  Problems  can  give  comparative  survey  of 
wages  in  various  occupations.) 

3.   Transportation. 

(a)  Mileage. 

(b)  Rolling  stock. 


(d)  Labor  costs. 

/passenger, 
W  Rates 


.     f  stocks  and  bonds, 
(/)    Profits  to  companies  <         ,.   .  ,      , 

(Problems  to  apply  preferably  to  local  railroads  or  street  car 
systems  and  designed  to  give  some  idea  of  the  difficult  problems 
of  fixing  a  fair  railway  rate.) 

4.  Commerce. 

(a)  Wholesale  (costs,  profits,  kinds). 

(6)  Retail  (ditto). 

(c)   Cooperative  enterprises. 

f  Kinds  of  banks,  departments,  investments, 
(a)  Banking  <  ,.  .  ... 

1.        profits,  rates  of  interest. 

(Problems  meant  to  open  up  the  complex  system  of  getting 
products  from  the  farmer,  miner,  etc.  to  the  manufacturer  or 
retailer  and  then  to  the  consumer  ;  and  to  show  the  social  inter- 
dependence of  our  whole  living  family.) 

5.  Community  and  national  life. 
(a)  Activities. 

(1)  Public  utilities  (light,  water,  transportation,  gas). 

(2)  Paving,  street  cleaning,  sewage,  and  garbage  disposal. 


APPENDIX  181 

(3)  Public  health  and  hospitals. 

/,\  T.  j       x-      f  Number  of  schools,  of  pupils,  of  teach- 

(4)  Education  <  ,  ,    . 

I      ers,  cost  of  equipment,  salaries. 

(5)  Police. 

(6)  Defense. 

(7)  Conservation. 

(Problems  designed  primarily  to  call  attention  to  the  extent 
of  social  and  constructive  activities  on  the  part  of  the  state.) 

(b)  Income. 

personal, 

(1)  Taxes    ?r°perty' 

income, 

indirect. 

(2)  Tariffs. 

(Problems  to  create  an  understanding  of  the  methods  and 
purposes  of  taxation,  together  with  discontent  with  our  present 
chaos  in  the  revenue  system.) 


APPENDIX  IV 

Reading  for  teachers  who  feel  a  deficiency  in  their  historical 
preparation. 

West,  Ancient  History;    Allyn  &  Bacon,  Boston,  Mass. 
Guerber,  Myths  of  Greece  and  Rome;    American  Book  Co., 

New  York  City. 
Robinson,  An  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Western  Europe; 

Ginn  &  Co.,  Boston  Mass. 
Adams,  The  Growth  of  the  French  Nation;    Macmillan,  New 

York  City. 

Dickens,  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities;  Dutton,  New  York  City. 
Green,  Short  History  of  the  English  People;    Macmillan,  New 

York  City. 
Cheyney,  Introduction  to  the  Industrial  and  Social  History  of 

England;  Macmillan,  New  York  City. 
McLaughlin,  A  History  of  the  American  Nation;    Appleton, 

New  York  City. 
Cheyney,  European  Background  of  American  History;  Harper 

Brothers,  New  York  City. 

Guerber,  The  Book  of  the  Epic;  Lippincott,  Philadelphia. 
MacMurray,   Special  Method  in  History;  Macmillan,   New 

York  City. 
Van    Tyne,    Democracy's    Educational    Problem;      Missouri 

School  Journal,  October,  1918. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


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